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SOME LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS 
OF EAST ANGLIA 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR 

THE NORFOLK BROADS 
WILD LIfE IN EAST ANGLIA 
A LITTLE GUIDE TO NORFOLK 
A LITTLE GUIDE TO SUFFOLK 



SOME 

LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS 

OF EAST ANGLIA 

BY 

WILLIAM A. pUTT 

AUTHOR OF " WILD LIFE IN EAST ANGLIA," ETC. 



WITH SIXTEEN ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR BY 

WALTER DEXTER, R.B.A. 

AND SIXTEEN OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS 



METHUEN & CO. 

36 ESSEX STREET W.C. 

LONDON 



.J 8 




First Published in igoy 









TO GIPSY 

" Marna with the trees' Ufe 
In her veins a-stir ! 
Marna of the aspen heart 
Where the sudden quivers start ! 
Quick-responsive, subtle, wild ! 
Artless as an artless child, 
Spite of all her reach of art ! 
Oh, to roam with her ! 

" Marna of the far quest 
After the divine ! 
Striving ever for some goal 
Past the blunder-god's control ! 
Dreaming of potential years 
When no day shall dawn in fears ! 
That's the Marna of my soul, 
Wander-bride of mine ! " 



PREFACE 

AFTER reading the interesting study of British 
genius made by Mr. Havelock Ellis, and finding 
Norfolk and Suffolk in a fairly assured position at the 
head of a table of the English counties valued according 
to their production of men and women of marked 
intellectual ability, a writer proposing to treat of some 
of the literary associations of East Anglia is tempted to 
introduce his subject with some comment on this in- 
structive result of a careful and laborious investigation. 
Local patriotism, which I hold to be a very good thing, 
notwithstanding that the bias of it is, in the opinion of 
Mr. Ellis, " always a sign of intellectual ill-breeding," 
naturally urges a man to emphasize such intellectual 
predominance as pertains to his native neighbourhood or 
homeland, and when it is proved to him that the county 
of his birth produced during the nineteenth century a 
larger amount of ability in proportion to the number 
of its inhabitants than any other county, and that an 
adjoining county, in which he happens to reside, has, 
according to Sir Conan Doyle, a " quite phenomenal " 
record for intellectual productivity, it is hardly surprising 
if he be strongly inclined to dwell on these facts and 
make the most of them. 

A little consideration, however, compels him to admit 



viii LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

that he can find no immediate justification for adopting 
such a course ; for although he may be satisfied that a 
goodly number of the more or less famous persons he 
intends to present to his readers were true East Anglians, 
wise men and women of the East, he cannot ignore the 
fact that Norfolk and Suffolk owe some of their most 
interesting literary associations to celebrities to whom 
other counties have the first claim because they happen 
to have been born there ; while yet other notable folk, 
though born in one or another of our two eastern- 
most counties, can hardly be considered genuine East 
Anglians, seeing that their parents, and perhaps their 
ancestors for several generations, were more closely con- 
nected with other parts of the country. That so many 
of them should have shown so marked a partiality for 
East Anglia may perhaps be taken as evidence of their 
appreciation of the exceptional merit of its inhabitants ; 
but as to affirm this would be to support Mr. EUis's 
statement in respect to the bias of local patriotism I will 
not do so. 

Another very good reason why I should not enter 
upon the subject of this book with more than this 
brief reference to the native ability of East Anglia is 
that in the following chapters no pretence is made to 
deal with anything like all the famous men and women 
of letters who have been associated with Eastern 
England — to attempt to do so would be to essay the 
impossible. Indeed, it is very doubtful whether the book 
will have a single reader who will not be disappointed 
by the omission of some writer who in that reader's 
opinion — probably a very just one — ought not to have 
been neglected. But to do anything like justice to the 



PREFACE ix 

literary associations of East Anglia is a task for some one 
whose intellectual equipment is up to the high standard 
of East Anglian merit, and whose acquaintance with 
the literature of the district and the lives of its literary- 
celebrities, whether native or not, is far wider and more 
intimate than my own. All I can claim to have done is 
to have gathered together a number of facts, anecdotes, 
and incidents, together with certain opinions and im- 
pressions of East Anglia ; to have connected them as 
nearly as possible with the places they in a greater or 
lesser degree belong to ; and to have tried to give some 
sort of form to a rather rambling subject by dealing 
with it in certain topographical divisions into which it 
seems naturally to distribute itself Through the adop- 
tion of this arrangement the book may prove to be 
of some use as a guide to the literary associations of 
Norfolk and Suffolk. My excuse for having made a 
considerable number of quotations from various sources 
is, that it seems to me very much better that in a book 
of this kind the men and women introduced should 
speak for themselves wherever possible, than that the 
author should attempt to express their opinions and 
feelings for them. 

At the end of the book a list is given of the works 
which have been consulted during the writing of it. I 
must, however, express my special indebtedness to Mr. 
W. Aldis Wright and Messrs. Macmillan & Co. for their 
kind permission to quote from the " Letters of Edward 
FitzGerald ; " to Mr. Thomas Wright for a like kindness 
in respect of his "Life of Edward FitzGerald ;" and to 
Mrs. Barham Johnson and Messrs. Methuen & Co. for 
allowing me to quote from "William Bodham Donne and 



X LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

his Friends." Messrs. Macmillan have also been kind 
enough to let me use certain anecdotes appearing in the 
late Dr. Gordon Hake's " Memoirs of Eighty Years." 

For assistance in securing some of the photographs 
that are reproduced I am indebted to Miss Metcalfe 
(Beccles), the Rev. G. A. Crossle (Broome Rectory), Mr. 
F. J. S. Rippingall (Langham), Mr, J. Loder (Wood- 
bridge), Mr. H. Birkbeck (Eaton), Mr. Bertram Hall 
(Blundeston), and Mr. T. H. Warren (East Dereham). 

W. A. D. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER I 

PAGE 

THE HOMES AND HAUNTS OF EDWARD FITZGERALD . . I 

CHAPTER II 

THE HOMES AND HAUNTS OF EDWARD FITZGERALD 

{continued). . . . . . . . .18 

CHAPTER III 

WITH CRABBE AT ALDEBURGH 3 1 

CHAPTER IV 

IN AND ABOUT FRAMLINGHAM 55 

CHAPTER V 
WITH CRABBE AT PARHAM 69 

CHAPTER VI 

EAST DEREHAM 81 

CHAPTER VII 
NORWICH 100 

CHAPTER VIII 

SIR THOMAS BROWNE AND BISHOP HALL . . . . I26 

CHAPTER IX 

LOWESTOFT I52 

xi 



xii CONTENTS 

CHAPTER X 

PAGE 

GEORGE BORROW AT OULTON 1 66 

CHAPTER XI 

DICKENS' "BLUNDERSTONE" AND THOMAS GRAY . . 185 

CHAPTER XII 
GREAT YARMOUTH 1 93 

CHAPTER XIII 

THE WAVENEY VALLEY 212 

CHAPTER XIV 

THE WAVENEY VALLEY {continued) . . . . .232 

CHAPTER XV 

BURY ST. EDMUNDS 24$ 

CHAPTER XVI 
BURY ST. EDMUNDS {continued) 262 

CHAPTER XVII 

BARTON AND HAWSTEAD . . . . . . . 275 

CHAPTER XVIII 

HONINGTON, EUSTON, AND ICKWORTH 29O 

CHAPTER XIX 
KING'S LYNN AND NORTH NORFOLK 302 

CHAPTER XX 
KING'S LYNN AND NORTH NORFOLK {continued) . . . 320 

WORKS CONSULTED 332 

INDEX 335 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

IN COLOUR 

TO FACE PAGE 
SLAUGHDEN, WHERE THE POET CRABBE WORKED AS A QUAY 
LABOURER ..,.,.. Frontispiece 

■ BOULGE CHURCH, IN THE CHURCHYARD OF WHICH EDWARD 

FITZGERALD IS BURIED . . . . . . .12 

FARL4NGAY HALL, WHERE FITZGERALD ENTERTAINED CARLYLE . l6 

TOMB OF HENRY HOWARD, EARL OF SURREY .... 58 

RENDHAM, WHERE CRABBE COlftPLETED " THE PARISH REGISTER " 

AND WROTE PART OF " THE BOROUGH " . . . -7^ 

EAST DEREHAM CHURCH, WHERE THE POET COWPER IS BURIED 88 

~ NORWICH FROM MOUSEHOLD HEATH . . . . . .102 

NORWICH GRAMMAR SCHOOL HO 

OULTON CHURCH 182 

BLUNDESTON, A VILLAGE ASSOCIATED WITH CHARLES DICKENS 

AND THOMAS GRAY 186 

GREAT YARMOUTH . . I96 

OLD HALL, BARSHAM, A HOME OF SIR JOHN SUCKLING . . 212 

BUNGAY FROM THE RIVER WAVENEY ..... 224 

THE abbot's BRIDGE, BURY ST. EDMUNDS .... 246 

BURY GRAMMAR SCHOOL, WHERE EDWARD FITZGERALD WAS A 

SCHOLAR 262 

king's LYNN 304 

xiii 



xiv LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

IN MONOTONE 

TO FACE PAGE 

BREDFIELD HOUSE, THE BIRTHPLACE OF EDWARD FITZGERALD . 4 

SLAUGHDEN $2 

From a Photograph by Messrs. Valentine, Dundee. 

-TOMB OF HENRY HOWARD, EARL OF SURREY ... 64 

From Loders ' ' History of Framlingham" 

> GEORGE sorrow's BIRTHPLACE, EAST DEREHAM ... 84 

From a Photograph by Mr, Cave, Dereham. 

HILL HOUSE, EAST DEREHAM, WHERE SIR JOHN FENN EDITED 

THE " PASTON LETTERS " 98 

•MANTELPIECE FORMERLY IN SIR THOMAS BROWNE'S HOUSE IN 

NORWICH ; NOW IN STOKE HOLY CROSS HALL . . • I28 

STATUE OF SIR THOMAS BROWNE, HAYMARKET, NORWICH . . I46 

From a Photograph by Mr. Coe, Norwich. 

BISHOP HALL'S PALACE, NOW THE DOLPHIN INN . . . I50 

From a Photograph by Mr. Coe, Norwich. 

NORMANSTON MANOR-HOUSE, THE BIRTHPLACE OF FREDERICK 

DENISON MAURICE, AND A RESORT OF THE POET CRABBE . 166 
From a Photograph by Mr. Jenkins, Lowestoft. 

GEORGE BORROW'S SUMMER-HOUSE AT OULTON . . . -174 

From a Photograph by Mr, Jenkins, Lowestoft. 

BLUNDESTON LODGE, VISITED BY THE POET GRAY . . I9O 

OLD HALL, BARSHAM 2l8 

BROOME RECTORY, THE BIRTHPLACE OF THOMAS MANNING . 234 

BARTON HALL, WHERE GOLDSMITH WAS THE GUEST OF THE 

BUNBURYS 280 

From a Photograph by Mr. Cousins, Bury St. Edmunds. 

COTTAGE AT HONINGTON, IN WHICH ROBERT BLOOMFIELD WAS 

BORN 292 

» MANOR COTTAGE, LANGHAM ; THE NORFOLK HOME OF CAPTAIN 

MARRYAT 328 



SOME LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS 
OF EAST ANGLIA 



CHAPTER I 

THE HOMES AND HAUNTS OF EDWARD 
FITZGERALD 

Woodbridge to Bredfield — Bredfield House — FitzGerald's boy- 
hood — Boulge Cottage — " The Wits of Woodbridge " — Rev. George 
Crabbe — James Spedding and Frederick Tennyson — Edward 
Byles Cowell — " Saldman and Abs^l " — Boulge Church — Fitz- 
Gerald's Grave — Bredfield churchyard — Farlingay Hall — The 
" Rub^iydt of Omar Khayyam" — Carlyle at Farlingay — His 
description of FitzGerald. 

IT is "roses, roses all the way" on the morning in 
April when I start from Woodbridge on a pil- 
grimage to some of the homes and haunts of Edward 
FitzGerald ; but they are not the roses of which Omar 
and Hafiz sang — they are primroses, peering between 
the budding brambles arching the roadside ditches, 
nestling close to the hawthorn roots, and mingling with 
the cowslips in the meadows and along the grassy road 
borders. On such a morning, FitzGerald, in one of his 
happier moods, would have sung — 

"The spring is alive 

And the meadows are green ! " 
B I 



2 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

and, breaking " the old pipe in twain," he would have 
been — 

" Away to the meadows, 
The meadows again !" 

For before the frost-white blossoms have faded on the 
blackthorns, there are swallows skimming between the 
roadside oaks and over the springing grass, the fresh 
green of wild parsley leaves has clothed the banks, 
purple ground-ivy and golden stars of lesser celandine 
are brightening the ditchsides, and here and there the 
sun-warmed air is fragrant with sweetbriar when it 
enters a copse and comes out laden with the sweetness 
of violets. In every roadside garden there is a thrush 
singing or a bullfinch busy among the fruit-buds, 
yellow-hammers in pairs fly in and out of the hedges, 
titmice frolic amid the slender branches of elm and 
black poi51ar, and occasionally a chaffinch sings his 
brief, rapid song or more frequently calls pink, pink, 
from tree-top or greening thorn-bush. All the way 
from Woodbridge to Bredfield the country is alive 
with singing birds, and at intervals the call of a 
cuckoo makes perfect the gladsomeness of a bright 
spring day. 

The parish of Bredfield adjoins Woodbridge on the 
north, and it is not more than half an hour's walk from 
the town to Bredfield House, formerly Bredfield White 
House, in which Edward FitzGerald was born, and in 
which his father John Purcell (who took his wife's 
surname of FitzGerald when her father died) lived for 
several years. The house, which stands well back 
from the road on the left, is an imposing Jacobean 
building, painted white and fronted with Dutch gables ; 



HOMES AND HAUNTS OF FITZGERALD 3 

between it and the road stretches a park which in 
spring is spangled with cowslips and in which are a 
few old trees and well-grown firs. It stands well, on 
fairly high ground which slopes away in front into a 
small valley widening into that of the river Deben ; so 
it well may be that even during his boyhood Edward 
FitzGerald came under the spell of that beautiful 
drowsy valley which all his life had such a fascination 
for him, and the charms of which more than one poet 
has sung. This morning a blue haze fills the valley, 
but not so dense that the sunlight cannot penetrate it, 
lighting up the fresh green of its bordering woodlands 
and flashing upon its tidal waters ; undoubtedly it was 
this pleasant outlook determined in the builder's mind 
the site of the house in those long-gone days when 
James I. was king. FitzGerald, notwithstanding that 
he feared more than he loved his beautiful but haughty 
and imperious mother, and would hide among the 
shrubs in front of the house when he saw her large 
yellow coach and four black horses coming up the 
drive, always had pleasant recollections of his Bredfield 
home ; and when he was an old man one of his latest 
rambles out of Woodbridge was towards the White 
House, where he wandered through the grounds and 
peered into the windows of that room which was called 
the " Magistrates' Room," because it was there he used 
to be whipped. But it was characteristic of him that 
he would not be persuaded to re-enter the house after 
all those with whom he had lived there were dead, and 
the place had for him sorrowful as well as pleasant 
associations. The former were bound to be uppermost 
in a mind always more or less tinged with melancholy 



4 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

and impressed with the saddening knowledge that " the 
Leaves of Life keep falling one by one." 

But it was during what was, perhaps, the happiest 
period of his life — when he occupied the little thatched 
cottage at Boulge — that a ramble towards Bredfield 
was most delightful to him, and the sight of his old 
home suggested to him the writing of his " Bredfield 
Hall," in which he dwelt so lovingly on the charms of 
the old house and on its past glories, beginning with — 

" Lo, an English mansion founded 
In the elder James's reign, 
Quaint and stately, and surrounded 
With a pastoral domain. 

" With well-timber'd lawn and gardens 
And with many a pleasant mead, 
Skirted by the lofty coverts 
Where the hare and pheasant feed. 

" Flank'd it is with goodly stables, 
Shelter'd by coeval trees ; 
So it lifts its honest gables 
Towards the distant German seas ; 

" Where it once discern'd the smoke 
Of old sea-battles far away : 
Saw victorious Nelson's topmasts 
Anchoring in Hollesley Bay." 

And he went on to picture the scenes the fine old house 
had witnessed since it first reared its " chimneys high " 
and " gilded vanes " above the Deben valley : the 
knight in ruff and doublet, the cavaliers, the " languid 
beauties limn'd by Leiy," the full-wigged Justice, and 
the freely-tippling Tory squires. 




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HOMES AND HAUNTS OF FITZGERALD 5 

" Here they lived and here they greeted, 
Maids and matrons, sons and sires. 
Wandering in its walks, or seated 
Round its hospitable fires. 

" Oft their silken dresses floated 

Gleaming through the pleasure ground : 
Oft dash'd by the scarlet-coated 
Hunter, horse, and dappled hound." 

But ill the near or far future he saw the day when the 
scene of all these glories must meet with the inevitable 
fate of man and all his handiwork — 

" And though each succeeding master, 
Grumbling at the cost to pay, 
Did with coat of paint and plaster 
Hide the wrinkles of decay ; 

" Yet the secret worm ne'er ceases, 
Nor the mouse behind the wall ; 
Heart of oak will come to pieces, 
And farewell to Bredfield Hall ! " 

In one of his letters to Bernard Barton, the Quaker 
poet, FitzGerald thanks him for sending him a picture 
of " dear old Bredfield," adding — 

"Some of the tall ash trees about it used to be 
visible at sea ; but I think their topmost branches are 
decayed now. . . . From the road before the lawn, 
people used plainly to see the topmasts of the men-of- 
war lying in Hollesley Bay during the war. I like the 
idea of the old English house holding up its inquiring 
chimneys and weathercocks (there is great physiognomy 
in weathercocks) towards the far-off sea, and the ships 
upon it. How well I remember when we used all to be 
in the Nursery, and from the windows see the hounds 



6 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

come across the lawn, my father and Mr. Jenney in their 
hunting-caps, etc., with their long whips — all Daguerreo- 
typed into the mind's eye now — and that is all." 

Later on, to the same correspondent, he wrote to 
ask about the health of his friend Mr. Jenney, who had 
become the owner of Bredfield House since the Fitz- 
Geralds had left it. " Seeing him cross the stiles 
between Hasketon and Bredfield, and riding with his 
hounds over the lawn, is among the scenes in that novel, 
called ' The Past ' which dwell most in my memory." 

While the FitzGeralds lived at Bredfield, Edward 
was sent to school, first at Woodbridge and then at 
Bury St. Edmunds ; but when he was sixteen years old 
they removed to Wherstead, near Ipswich, where they 
made their home for about ten years. Then they 
returned to the neighbourhood of Woodbridge and 
occupied Boulge Hall, a house dating from the reign of 
Queen Anne, and which had beside one of its park 
gates a quaint little one-storied thatched cottage, 
originally built for an elderly lady who had lived at 
the Hall, but was frequently on bad terms with her 
husband. Of this snug cottage Edward FitzGerald 
eventually took possession ; but that was not until after 
he had taken his degree at Cambridge and numbered 
among his intimate friends Thackeray, John Allen, 
Frank Edgeworth, the brother of the authoress, James 
Spedding, and others, who had even thus early learned 
to love him and for whom he had so deep a regard that, 
as he afterwards said, his friendships were more like 
loves. To reach Boulge from the White House one 
passes through a part of the village of Bredfield, and a 
ramble of a little more than a mile brings one to the 



HOMES AND HAUNTS OF FITZGERALD 7 

bounds of the park, where a byroad on the left leads to 
the famous white-walled thatched cottage which was 
the scene of so many meetings of FitzGerald with the 
" wits of Woodbridge," and of which he can never have 
had any but the pleasantest of memories, notwith- 
standing that he looked upon Boulge as one of the 
ugliest and dullest places in England. 

It was in the spring of 1837, just when the primroses 
and cowslips were in full bloom, that he took up his 
residence in the cottage, making the little room on the 
right of the entrance his study, and filling it with his 
books, a bust of Shakespeare, a piano, music, pipes, and 
walking-sticks. Here he began and continued for some 
years to live what he called a very pleasant Robinson 
Crusoe sort of life. To attend to his needs there were 
John Faiers and his wife, the former an old Waterloo 
veteran who worked on the Boulge estate, the latter " a 
snuffy but vain old woman, with very red arms, who 
wore, besides other vanities, an enormous bonnet full of 
flowers." For constant companions he had a cat, a dog, 
and his parrot. Beauty Bob ; but fortunately he was 
never, while occupying his Boulge retreat, in lack of 
good and congenial friends. Chief among these was 
the Rev. George Crabbe, who was at that time vicar of 
Bredfield, and who was the author of a Life of his 
father the poet, which is one of the most delightful 
of British biographies. Upon him FitzGerald soon 
bestowed the name of " the Radiator," on account of the 
gleams of wit and wisdom he so freely emitted ; and he 
is described by Mr. Thomas Wright as having been 

"a strong muscular man of the Parson-Adams type, 
with a prominent Wellington nose. Like FitzGerald, 



8 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

he was careless of personal appearance, his clothes did 
not fit, his hat was never in the right place. As he 
could not be trusted with money (for when out he 
invariably gave away all he had to the needy or the 
plausible), his daughters used to take the precaution of 
emptying his pockets before he quitted the house. He 
was loved by all the parish, and he loved all and prayed 
for all, ' including Mary Anne Cuthbert,' the only black 
sheep in his flock. . . . He had a passion for botany 
and fine trees, and once pleased FitzGerald hugely by 
saying of a landowner who had felled some oaks that he 
had 'scandalously misused the Globe.'" 

Frequent visits to Geldeston, where his sister, Mrs. 
Kerrich, lived, helped FitzGerald to pass away the 
years during which he made the cottage his home, and 
occasionally he wandered further afield, to London, 
Bedford, Brighton, and elsewhere ; but the days he 
spent here were very pleasant ones, and he seems to 
have shared in such social pleasures as Boulge and 
Bredfield afforded with far more zest than he ever showed 
for such things in after years. Frequently he helped 
Caroline Crabbe, the daughter of the vicar, to teach the 
children in the Bredfield village school, while on Sundays 
he rendered similar service to Lucy Barton, his future 
wife, in the Sunday school. One day he occupied him- 
self with concocting two gallons of tar water, to be 
tried, first on the vain old Mrs. Faiers, and if she sur- 
vived, on himself; but this was something quite out of 
the ordinary, and calculated to upset the accustomed 
routine of his days. As a rule he spent his mornings in 
reading " the same old books over and over again," the 
afternoons in rambling along the country roads and field 
footpaths, accompanied by his dog, and in the evening 



HOMES AND HAUNTS OF FITZGERALD 9 

he would sit by an open window of the cottage, inhaling 
the fragrance of the roses which climbed beside it, and 
listening to the thrushes as they " rustled bedwards in 
the garden." There were nights, however, when good 
company assembled in this little cottage. Bernard 
Barton would stroll over from Woodbridge, and Crabbe 
from Bredfield vicarage. Occasionally they would be 
joined by the Rev. — Churchyard, of Woodbridge, or 
by the Rev. Robert (afterwards Archdeacon) Groome, 
of Monk Soham, and everything would be, as was after- 
wards said, " most hospitable, but not comfortable." 
Spedding and Frederick Tennyson also visited him here, 
and when the latter once complained of the dulness of 
FitzGerald's letters, he replied that the original fault lay 
in his having chosen such a dull place as Boulge to live 
in. But he added, " I really do like to sit in this doleful 
place with a good fire, a cat and dog on the rug, and an 
old woman in the kitchen." And when the "wits of 
Woodbridge " could not join him in the evenings, and 
he found the place too dull, he would stroll across the 
park to the Hall Farm to have a chat with his farmer 
friend, Job Smith, or he would light a lantern and find 
his way through the fields to Bredfield vicarage, and 
spend an hour or two with Crabbe in that dingy little 
study he called the " Cobblery," and which reeked of 
tobacco and smelt like an inn-parlour. To one of his 
correspondents he wrote that he had entered upon "a 
decidedly agricultural course of conduct." He " walked 
about the field where the people were at work," with the 
result that " the more dirt accumulates on my shoes, the 
more I think I know." 

In the year 1846, while he was still at Boulge, he 



10 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

made the acquaintance of Edward Byles Cowell, who 
afterwards became Professor of Sanskrit at Cambridge, 
and but for whom he would never have thought of 
translating the " Rubaiydt " of Omar Khayyam. Cowell, 
who was born and educated at Ipswich, where he had 
for schoolfellows Charles Keene, the Punch artist, and 
George William Kitchin, afterwards Dean of Winchester, 
married Elizabeth Charlesworth,^ whose father, the 
Rev. John Charlesworth, lived at Bramford, near Ipswich, 
in a prettily situated little house which the Cowells 
afterwards inhabited, and where FitzGerald became a 
frequent guest. He seems to have also been an admirer 
of Elizabeth Charlesworth, for when Cowell announced 
that he had become engaged to her, he replied : " The 
deuce you are ! Why, you have taken my lady ! " But 
this was no bar to his frequent visits to Bramford, where 
he and Cowell read Greek plays and Greek history 
together, and he began to learn Spanish and Persian. 
Of the days he spent there in the little house with the 
japonica trained over its front and the "monkey-puzzle" 
tree conspicuous in the garden, FitzGerald, whom 
Cowell wrote of about this time as " a kind of slumber- 
ing giant or silent Vesuvius," had none save pleasant 
memories, and it is hardly surprising that he was 
strongly opposed to Cowell's leaving Bramford for 
Oxford, and afterwards for India, where he went as 
Professor of History and Political Economy in the 
Presidency College, Calcutta. It was just before the 
Cowells sailed from England that FitzGerald brought 
out his translation of Jami's " Salamin and Absal," in 

1 A sister of Maria Charlesworth, who wrote several popular 
children's books, and who died in i8So. 



HOMES AND HAUNTS OF FITZGERALD 11 

an introductory letter to which, addressed to Cowell, 
he wrote — 

"Ah! happy Days! When shall we three meet 
again — when dip in that unreturning Tide of Time and 
Circumstance ! ... In those meadows far from the world, 
it seemed, as Saldman's Island . . . before an Iron Railway 
broke the Heart of the Happy Valley whose Gossip was 
the Mill-wheel, and Visitors the Summer Airs that 
momentarily ruffled the sleepy stream that turned it as 
they chased one another over to lose themselves in 
Whispers in the Copse beyond." 

From the Boulge cottage it is a walk of only a few 
minutes across the park, or along the road that skirts it, 
to the parish church, which stands in the park, well 
shaded by trees, and with a well-established rookery 
near it, where to-day the birds are cawing incessantly 
and busy nest-building. The churchyard is one to which 
many men have been irresistibly drawn since that June 
day of 1883, when Edward FitzGerald was laid to rest 
in the shadow of its grey church tower ; but this morning, 
when in the bright sunlight everything rejoices in the 
glad awakening of spring, I approach it with lingering 
feet : the few steps that have to be taken between the 
cottage and the graveyard seem to bring about a too- 
sudden transition from life to death. In the cottage one 
feels so conscious of the presence of FitzGerald that it 
is not easy to believe he has left it for ever ; before 
standing by his grave one would like to trace him 
through other scenes with which he is associated, and 
so come to the last scene of all prepared to appreciate 
its full solemnity. For in his life there was much that 
happened in a quiet way between the day when he left 



12 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

the cottage and that on which he was brought back to 
Boulge for the last time ; so to come to his graveside 
before having followed him to where the best work of 
his life was done, seems like interrupting the natural 
sequence of his life and anticipating its end. 

It was like FitzGerald to have no desire to be 
buried in the grim and ugly mausoleum of his family. 
Could his own wishes have been carried out, he would 
have been cremated ; but as this was impossible, owing 
to the Woking crematorium not having been opened 
for public use at the time of his death, there was dug 
for him just an ordinary grave — it is not even a brick 
one, the old sexton assures me, as I stand beside it — 
and over it was placed a granite slab carved with a 
cross-fleury and the simple inscription — 

"Edward FitzGerald, 

"Born 31st March, 1809. Died 14th June, 1883. 

' It is He that hath made us, and not we ourselves.'" 

In the church, over the FitzGeralds' manorial pew, there 
are elaborate marble memorials inscribed with letters of 
gold; but he, upon whose simple grave fall the pink 
petals of the rose bush raised from the seeds of that 
which sheds its fragrance around the Persian poet's 
tomb at Naishapur, has his name written in abiding 
letters in the hearts of men. Eccentric, whimsical, and 
retiring as he was, he had the knack of making true 
men love him ; and now that he has " crept silently to 
rest," thousands who never knew him reckon their 
mental likeness of him among the things they hold 
most dear. Probably, no other man who was so shy 




BOULGE CHURCH 

IN THE CHfRCHYARD OF WHICH FDWARD KITZCKRALD IS Bl"RIED 



HOMES AND HAUNTS OF FITZGERATJ) 13 

of meeting men, ever won so much affection or 
unconsciously insured for himself a so lasting fame. 
A small iron plate beneath the rose tree is inscribed : 

"This Rose Tree Raised in Kew 
Gardens from Seed Brought by- 
William Simpson Artist-Traveller 
from the Grave of Omar Khayyam 
at Naishapur was Planted by a few 
Admirers of Edward FitzGerald 
in the name of the Omar Khayyam 
Club. 7th October, 1893." 

It was a happy inspiration and a pleasing tribute to him 
who sang — 

*' Each Morn a thousand Roses brings, you say ; 
Yes, but where leaves the Rose of Yesterday ; " 

but the best tribute of all is that of those silent ones 
who from time to time, coming from places far and near, 
bow their heads above the dust of one they never knew, 
but whose words have stirred their hearts and finely 
expressed their " dark philosophy." They are not so 
many as those who make pilgrimages to the tombs of 
some great men ; but they pay fitting, if silent, homage 
to the dead ; and as they stand by the graveside, they 
repeat the lesson he has taught them — 

" So when that Angel of the darker Drink 
At last shall find you by the river-brink. 

And, offering his Cup, invite your Soul 
Forth to your Lips to quaff — you shall not shrink. 

"Why, if the Soul can fling the Dust aside. 
And naked on the Air of Heaven ride, 

Were't not a Shame — were't not a Shame for him 
In this clay carcase to abide ? 



14 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

" 'Tis but a Tent where takes his one day's rest 
A Sultan to the realm of Death addrest ; 

The Sultan rises, and the dark Ferrash 
Strikes, and prepares it for another Guest." 

There is little in the church at Boulge to make one 
pause there : it was restored by FitzGerald's brother 
John, and fungi no longer grow about the communion 
table. Nor on the Hall Farm hard by is there anything 
to remind one of that old-fashioned low thatched build- 
ing, " provided with all the things in Bloomfield's poems," 
in the cosy chimney corner of which FitzGerald, smoking 
a long clay pipe, would sit in the evening with Job 
Smith, his farmer friend, until Job's wife broadly hinted 
that it was time for him to go home. Such pleasant 
evenings came to an end when the farmhouse was burnt 
to the ground ; but something like them was enjoyed a 
little later, when Job Smith removed to Farlingay Hall, 
a farmhouse about half a mile out of Woodbridge, and 
FitzGerald went to lodge with him. 

In returning from Boulge to Bredfield, I follow the 
footpath along which FitzGerald, lantern in hand, used 
to trudge at night to see his friend Crabbe, and just 
before crossing a tiny brook which widens into a small 
pool beneath some black poplars, I get a glimpse, on 
the left, of Bredfield High House, an ancient farmhouse 
with moulded brick chimneys. Then, after skirting a 
field with high hedges on which the blackthorn blossom 
is still gleaming against the blue of the sky, the footpath 
ends in Bredfield churchyard, in which Crabbe is buried, 
and not far from which is the vicarage he built. The 
church, which seems to have been originally an Early 
English structure, but like that of Boulge was restored 



HOMES AND HAUNTS OF FITZGERALD 15 

and modernized by John FitzGerald, is chiefly remark- 
able for its beautiful old carved and coloured roof and 
a good brass, dated 1611, to Leonard Farrington and 
his wife, who are represented with their six sons and two 
daughters. A plain stone marks the grave of Crabbe ; 
but in the chancel is a tablet erected to his memory by 
the inhabitants of the parish as " a token of gratitude 
for the many benefits and acts of kindness conferred 
upon them during his residence of twenty-two years as 
vicar." He died in September, 1857, in his seventy- 
third year, and FitzGerald, who attended his funeral, 
tells us that it was at his own desire he was buried 
" among the poor in the churchyard," and in a grave 
only distinguished "by a common Head and Footstone." 
His death was a sad blow to the friend with whom he 
had passed so many hours in smoking and arguing in 
the Boulge cottage, and who found it " melancholy 
enough " to enter the dark little " Cobblery " at the 
vicarage and take away with him the remains of the 
last cheroot Crabbe had tried to smoke, and a little 
silver nutmeg-grater which had belonged to the poet 
Crabbe. 

After passing Bredfield House again, I abandon the 
direct road to Woodbridge near a little cottage which 
was once a toll-house, and, taking the road to the right 
and its first branch road to the left, soon reach that fine 
old farmhouse Farlingay Hall, to which FitzGerald 
removed in 1853, and where he made his headquarters 
for about seven years, whilst he lived a somewhat roving 
life in paying frequent visits to some of his friends. It 
was at Farlingay he began, at the instigation of Cowell, 
to study Persian, and to translate " Saldmdn and Absdl," 



16 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

which was published anonymously in 1856 by Parker 
and Son, and printed by Childs of Bungay. Here, too, 
much of the " Rubaiyat " was rendered into the immortal 
quatrains ; but before the spell of the Persian poet, to 
whose temperament his own was so much akin, had 
been cast upon him, he was visited at Farlingay by 
Carlyle, whose coming, while eagerly anticipated by 
FitzGerald, seems to have caused him some disquietude 
in fearing his guest would not be comfortable. The 
visit was paid in August, 1855, and before Carlyle left 
Chelsea, he received from his anxious friend most careful 
instructions as to how he could make an easy journey ; 
while to Mrs. Carlyle, FitzGerald sent a message 
begging her to let him know what Carlyle was to eat, 
drink, and avoid. He promised that he should have 
entire liberty to stay as long or go as soon as he pleased, 
and that during his visit he should be left mainly to his 
own devices : he suggested, too, that he should bring 
some books. So Carlyle duly arrived with his books, 
and seems to have been quite content with the arrange- 
ments made for his comfort and entertainment. He 
spent some time with Crabbe and his daughter, accom- 
panied FitzGerald on excursions to Dunwich, Aldeburgh, 
and the grand old castle at Framlingham, took several 
pleasant rambles in the neighbourhood of Woodbridge, 
and between them spent hours under an elm near the 
Farlingay house, reading Voltaire and other writers in 
preparation for his " Life of Frederick II." He arrived 
on August 8th and stayed until the i8th, refusing to 
return by rail, " like a great codfish in a hamper," and 
preferring the Ipswich steamer. Writing to FitzGerald 
a few days after his return, he complained that he had 




J 2 

< < 

< 2 



HOMES AND HAUNTS OF FITZGERALD 17 

been unable to get any sleep since he came out of 
Suffolk : " The stillness of Farlingay," he said, " is un- 
attainable in Chelsea ; " but for all that he felt " privately 
confident " that he had got good by his Suffolk visit. 
He promised that, if he lived, he would come again 
when FitzGerald had got his own house in order, and 
suggested that in that house there should be a " chamber 
in the wall " for himself, ^^ phis a pony that can trot, and 
a cow that gives good milk." " With these outfits," he 
added, " we shall make a pretty rustication now and 
then, not wholly Latrappish, but only half, on much 
easier terms than here." Carlyle subsequently wrote of 
FitzGerald as being "a lonely, shy, kind-hearted man, 
who discharged the sacred rites (of hospitality) with a 
kind of Irish zeal or piety." 



CHAPTER II 

THE HOMES AND HAUNTS OF EDWARD 
FITZGERALD (continued) 

FitzGerald removes to Woodbridge — The room over the 
gunsmith's — Scandal the "main staple" of Woodbridge — "Old 
Gooseberry" — Little Grange — Charles Keene — The Fairy God- 
mother — Tennyson at Woodbridge — John Grout — The " dear old 
Deben "— FitzGerald's last letter — His last journey — Bernard 
Barton — Quakers' graveyard — Charles Lamb's advice to Barton 
— Barton and the ship Bernard Barton. 

TOWARDS the end of i860, FitzGerald removed 
from Farlingay to Woodbridge, into the house ^ of 
Sharman Berry, a gun-maker living on the Market Hill 
near the quaint old Flemish-looking shire hall. For 
some time the country had had less charm for him, 
owing to the cutting down of old trees and levelling of the 
old wild-flower banks by the " petty race of squires " who 
only used " the earth as an investment ; " and so he had 
been gradually drawing nearer to Woodbridge, and had 
more than once talked of settling down in this, or some 
other small town, for the rest of his life. Still, as his 
biographer remarks, it does seem rather strange that a 
man of taste and culture " with an income of something 
like a thousand a year " should have chosen to live for 
thirteen years in a little room over the gunsmith's shop, 
where there was so little space for his pictures and 

1 The house is now occupied by Mr. Nunn, a house decorator. 

18 



HOMES AND HAUNTS OF FITZGERALD 19 

knick-knacks that it " looked like a back shop in War- 
dour Street." But apparently he was quite content 
with his cramped quarters, and when he felt lonely he 
would sometimes invite one or two of the local " Mer- 
chants " to " eat oysters and drink Burton ale " with 
him, or ferry across the Deben to have a chat with 
Alfred Smith, a son of his old farmer friend, who had 
settled down on a farm at Sutton Hoo. But much of 
his time was now spent in sailing on the Deben or 
taking short sea cruises in his small schooner yacht, the 
Scandal, which was named "after the main staple of 
Woodbridge," and captained by Thomas Newson, of 
Felixstowe, a smart seaman, who always carried his 
head on one side, reminding FitzGerald of " a magpie 
looking into a quart pot." Frequently, too, he paid 
brief visits to Lowestoft and Aldeburgh, where he 
collected sea lore from the fishermen, some of which 
he sent to Alfred Tennyson, at the same time telling 
Mrs. Tennyson to " send the old wretch here, where 
nobody scarce knows his name (don't be angry, Mrs. 
A. T.)." He also interested himself in the " manuring 
and skrimmaging " of the local volunteers, to whom he 
presented a challenge cup, and on one occasion prevailed 
upon his brother John to give a grand field day in the 
park at Boulge. But at the end of 1872 his landlord, 
Berry, became engaged to marry a widow, and Fitz- 
Gerald, who objected to the advent of the widow into 
the Market Hill house, rashly remarked that " old 
Berry would now have to be called ' Old Gooseberry.' " 
This injudicious witticism being repeated to the widow, 
its perpetrator was summarily ejected from his lodgings, 
though the meek Berry was much averse to parting 



20 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

with him. But the widow was determined, and when 
Berry ascended to FitzGerald's room to announce her 
decision, she remained at the foot of the stairs calling 
out " Be firm, Berry ! Remind him of what he called 
you." For some months FitzGerald occupied rooms in 
the house next door; but in 1875 he went to live in 
Little Grange, a house he had purchased and altered 
more or less to his liking. 

To reach Little Grange one follows the main road 
running through the town in a northerly direction until 
suburban Melton is almost reached, when a by-road 
branches off on the left, leading to Bredfield and 
Dallinghoo. On turning down this by-road, the last 
home of Edward FitzGerald is almost at once seen on 
the left — an enlarged old farmhouse with the main 
entrance opening on to a sort of terrace, beyond which 
is a small meadow or paddock with a few shrubs and 
trees. When FitzGerald bought it, it was called the 
Grange Farm — a name he continued to use for a while, 
but afterwards altered to that by which it is known 
to-day. But although he had enlarged it considerably 
before he removed into it, he was content with occupy- 
ing the largest room downstairs, which he had divided 
into two by folding doors, using one part as a study 
and the other as a bedroom. From the study a French 
casement opened on to a garden walk, leading to a 
dilapidated summer-house, in which he sometimes sat 
with a friend and offered him snuff from Bernard 
Barton's snuffbox. The garden walk he called the 
"Quarter-deck," and it was along this walk that Charles 
Kcene, the P7mch artist, whose acquaintance he had made 
at Dunwich, marched at times playing the bag-pipes, 



HOMES AND HAUNTS OF FITZGERALD 21 

or lounged, smoking a short clay pipe or sucking a 
succulent sweet known as a " brandy-ball," to the local 
variety of which he was so partial that FitzGerald had 
to send parcels of it to him in London. In his small 
garden, FitzGerald took a great interest ; for he had a 
passion for flowers, especially those with bright colours. 
His favourite was the nasturtium ; but, as he said, he 
" rather worshipped " an oleander there was in the 
garden ; and the crocuses, daffodils, and sweet peas 
were a delight to him year after year. His Oriental 
love of bright hues also led him to insist on old Mrs. 
Howe, his housekeeper, dressing herself in scarlet, when 
he called her the " Fairy Godmother." Her husband, 
John, who had been a sailor, was re-christened " Old 
Puddle-dog " on account of his frequent blunders in 
executing commissions. One of his duties was to 
attend to a stove in the hall ; and it was not long 
before this stove became known as " Howe's guitar," 
because of the din he usually made in raking out the 
ashes. When he was more noisy than usual, FitzGerald 
would burst out singing — 

" Gaily old Puddle-dog 
Banged his guitar." 

FitzGerald's own musical instrument was an organ, on 
which, on summer evenings, he would play for hours 
together, sometimes, as Mr. Thomas Wright tells us, 
" forgetting himself and others, and disappearing 
gradually in the gathering gloom, till at last nothing 
was visible but the white of his spreading hair and the 
dim outline of his shape, including the pendulous shawl," 
which he generally wore abroad and often when at home. 



22 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

In September, 1876, the "old wretch," Alfred Tenny- 
son, and his son at last accepted FitzGerald's frequent 
invitations to come and see him. They arrived unex- 
pectedly, and, on inquiring for the house of Edward 
FitzGerald, were promptly directed to that of a (locally) 
better known worthy of that name, who was a super- 
intendent of the Suffolk Police. But the superintendent 
soon conducted them to Little Grange, and it was with 
great delight that the two old friends met again after a 
lapse of nearly twenty years. They sat up late reviving 
old memories, and it was like " Old Fitz " not to hesitate 
about telling Tennyson that he had better not have 
written anything after 1842, when he ceased to be a 
poet and became an artist. But Tennyson loved his 
old friend far too well to be offended by his plain 
speaking, no matter how much truth there might be in 
what he said ; and he was much more hurt while at 
Woodbridge by reading in a newspaper that he (Tenny- 
son) had refused to allow Longfellow to quote from his 
poems. This report much annoyed him, and he at once 
sat down in FitzGerald's study and wrote to Longfellow, 
Hallam Tennyson hurrying off with the letter just in 
time to catch the post. "So my house," wrote Fitz- 
Gerald to Cowell a few days later, "is so far become 
a Palace, being the Place of a Despatch from one Poet 
to the other, all over the Atlantic ! " But he did not 
consider the " palace " a fit place for the entertainment 
of his friend, for whom he had accommodation provided 
at the old Bull Inn on Market Hill, then kept by a local 
celebrity named John Grout. Before Tennyson retired 
to the inn for the night, however, FitzGerald amused 
him with some bits of local gossip ; then, feeling that 



HOMES AND HAUNTS OF FITZGERALD 23 

he had been indiscreet, gravely warned his companion 
not to " let this go to the Bull 1 " One day during the 
poet's visit they had a trip down the Orwell in the 
Ipswich steamer ; and altogether their meeting seems to 
have given them much pleasure. At any rate, Tennyson 
always had most agreeable recollections of his visit to 
Little Grange, and even of his host's attempts to convert 
him to vegetarianism ; and years after he recalled them 
when he wrote in the dedication to his Tiresias 

volume — 

" Old Fitz, who from your suburb grange, 

Where once I tarried for a while, 
Glance at the wheeling Orb of change, 

And greet it with a kindly smile ; 
Whom yet I see as there you sit 

Beneath your sheltering garden-tree. 
And while your doves about you flit. 

And plant on shoulder, hand and knee, 
Or on your head their rosy feet. 

As if they knew your diet spares 
Whatever moved in that full sheet 

Let down to Peter at his prayers ; 
Who live on milk and meal and grass ; " 

and, after a playful reference to a ten weeks' trial of 
FitzGerald's "table of Pythagoras," he continued — 

" But none can say 
That Lenten fare makes Lenten thought. 

Who reads your golden Eastern lay, 
Than which I know no version done 

In English more divinely well ; 
A planet equal to the sun 

Which cast it, that large infidel 
Your Omar." 

A few days after Tennyson's departure from Wood- 
bridge, FitzGerald and Archdeacon Groome happened 



24 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

to meet old John Grout, the landlord of the Bull, to 
whom FitzGerald remarked that Woodbridge "should 
feel itself honoured " in having been paid a visit by 
Tennyson. Old John, not understanding this, asked 
Mr. Groome "who that gentleman was Mr. FitzGerald 
had been talking of." " Mr. Tennyson, the poet laureate," 
was the reply. " Dessay," said Old John ; " anyhow, he 
didn't fare to know much about hosses when I showed 
him over my stables ! " 

From the time of Tennyson's visit until the end of 
his life, FitzGerald passed most of his days at Little 
Grange very quietly, contenting himself with his books, 
his organ, his garden, and his pigeons. Occasionally he 
took a trip on the river, and more frequently paid visits 
to Aldeburgh, Lowestoft, or Merton, where George 
Crabbe, the son of his old Bredfield friend, was now 
rector. To those with whom he frequently corresponded 
he added Charles Eliot Norton, Professor of the History 
of Fine Art in Havard University ; Mr. W. Aldis Wright, 
who was to be his literary executor ; J. Russell Lowell ; 
and one or two others ; but as the years passed he took 
less and less pains to make new acquaintances. Writing 
of his life at this time his biographer says — • 

" It was a frequent custom with Edward FitzGerald 
to walk about the lanes and roads near his house at 
midnight. When all the world was at rest and silent 
he would emerge from his ' chateau,' his green and black 
plaid shawl round him and trailing on the ground, like 
some old Roman senator in toga, and mount Mill Hill 
(then with scarce a house on it) behind Little Grange. 
Here he would stalk backwards and forwards, brooding 
over his troubles ... or pondering the tremendous 
problems of life, death, and eternity — among the great 



HOMES AND HAUNTS OF FITZGERALD 25 

inky shapes of the windmills and their slowly revolving 
sails, dear to him if only for Don Quixote's sake, no 
sound reaching him save an occasional creak or the 
hoarse voice of a raven from some distant and indistinct 
chimney." 

In May, 1883, having business in London, he took 
the opportunity to see the Carlyle statue on the Chelsea 
Embankment and Carlyle's old house in Cheyne Row, 
*' now all neglected, unswept, ungarnished, uninhabited," 
and " To Let ; " but he was glad to hurry back the same 
evening to his own "dull home." In the same month he 
was seen seated on a bench beside the Deben, where he 
called to him a little boy who was playing in the ooze, 
and told him of the fate of the Master of Ravens wood. 
Probably this was the last time he ever sat on the bank 
of his " dear old Deben," which, when far away from it, 
he had often pictured to himself, "with the worthy collier 
sloop going forth into the wide world as the sun sinks." 
On June 12th he sat down to write to his friend Laurence, 
the painter, the last letter he ever wrote, in which he 
said — 

" If I do not write, it is because I have absolutely 
nothing to tell you that you have not known for the last 
twenty years. Here I live still, reading, and being read 
to, part of my time ; walking abroad three or four times 
a day, or night, in spite of wakening a Bronchitis, which 
has lodged like the household * Brownie ' within ; potter- 
ing about my garden (as I have just been doing), and 
snipping off dead Roses like Miss Tox ; and now and 
then a visit to the neighbouring Seaside, and a splash to 
Sea in one of the Boats. I never see a new Picture, nor 
hear a note of Music, except v/hen I drum out some old 
Tune on an Organ, which might almost be carried about 



26 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

the Streets with a handle to turn, and a Monkey on the 
top of it. So I go on living a life far too comfortable 
as compared with that of better and wiser men : but 
ever expecting a reverse in health such as my seventy- 
five years are subject to. . . . To-morrow I am going 
(for my one annual Visit) to G. Crabbe's, where I am 
to meet his Sisters, and talk over the old Bredfield days. 
Two of my eight nieces are now with me here in my 
house, for a two months' visit, I suppose and hope. 
And I think this is all I have to tell you of." 

After leaving Little Grange next day for Merton he 
never saw it again. He travelled to Merton by way of 
Bury, where, while waiting for a train,' he strolled into 
the town to have a look at his old school. He arrived 
at Merton tired but cheerful, and, after sauntering for a 
while in the garden, went early to bed. Next morning, 
when the servant went to call him, he was found to have 
died quietly in the night. It was just as he had wished 
the end to come ; for some years before, when his doctor 
had told him his heart was affected, he had said he was 
glad of it, as his end was likely to come suddenly, and 
there would be " no old women messing about him." 
His body was brought back to Little Grange, whence it 
was removed to Boulge for burial. 

Twilight is beginning when I turn away from Little 
Grange and retrace my steps along the quiet streets 
towards the Market Hill ; but there is daylight enough 
left for finding the narrow entrance to Turn Lane and 
the little graveyard of the Friends Chapel, where lies 
Bernard Barton, the Quaker poet, who was perhaps the 
chief of FitzGerald's Woodbridge friends. His grave is 
not hard to find ; for the headstones in that dingy 



HOMES AND HAUNTS OF FITZGERALD 27 

enclosure, though all alike and similarly inscribed, are 
very few, and time as yet has done nothing towards 
obliterating the simple inscription — 

"BERNARD BARTON, 

died 
19 of 2 mo. 1849. 
Aged 65." 

Barton, whom no one now remembers save as the friend 
of FitzGerald and Charles Lamb, is described by the 
former's biographer as having been a good-natured man 
with some bit of mock-modesty about him ; " his poems 
were known in every Suffolk homestead, and good little 
maidens by the Deben liked to see a copy lying in their 
chair beside their prayer-book before going to sleep." 
He was not a native of Woodbridge, but was educated 
at a Quaker school at Ipswich, and came here early in 
life and started business as a coal and corn merchant. 
His wife died in giving birth to his daughter Lucy, and 
his loss drove him for a while from the town ; on return- 
ing, he secured in Alexander's Bank an employment he 
continued until two days before his death. At one time, 
it is true, the reception given to some of his simple 
descriptive, meditative, and devotional verses, temporarily 
impressed him with the idea of its being safe for him to 
abandon bank-work and rely on versifying to provide 
him with means of existence ; but he was wise enough 
to take the advice of those who knew better than he did 
how weak a staff he proposed to rely on. Byron wrote 
to him : " Do not renounce writing, but never trust 
entirely to authorship. If you have a profession, retain 
it ; it will be, like Prior's fellowship, a last and sure 



28 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

resource." Charles Lamb, whose letters to Barton are 
among the most delightful he wrote, gave him equally 
good advice in his own inimitable way : 

" Throw yourself on the world, without any rational 
plan of support beyond what the chance employ of 
booksellers would afford you ! Throw yourself rather, 
my dear sir, from the steep Tarpeian rock slap-dash 
headlong upon iron spikes. If you have but five con- 
solatory minutes between the desk and the bed, make 
much of them, and live a century in them, rather than 
turn slave to the booksellers." " Keep to your bank, 
and the bank will keep you," he wrote again. " . . . O 
the corroding, torturing, tormenting thoughts that dis- 
turb the brain of the unlucky wight, who must draw 
upon it for daily sustenance ! Henceforth I retract all 
my fond complaints of mercantile employment ; look 
upon them as lovers' quarrels. I was but half in 
earnest. Welcome, dead timber of a desk, that makes 
me live ! " 

On another occasion, when Barton complained of his 
health being affected by late hours and a sedentary life, 
Southey sensibly advised him to keep good hours and 
never to write verses after supper ; while Lamb, on 
hearing that he suffered much from headache, wrote : 

"You are too apprehensive about your complaint. 
. . . Believe the general sense of the mercantile world, 
which holds that desks are not deadly. It is the mind, 
good B. B., and not the limbs, that faints by long sitting. 
Think of the patience of tailors — think how long the 
Lord Chancellor sits — think of the brooding hen." 

So Barton settled his mind to the monotony of 
money-changing, and devoted his spare time to the 
production of harmless little books of verses. 



HOMES AND HAUNTS OF FITZGERALD 29 

" The preparation of a book," wrote FitzGerald, in a 
preface to a posthumous edition of Barton's works, " was 
amusement and excitement to one who had little 
enough of it in the ordinary course of daily life : treaties 
with publishers — arrangements of printing — correspond- 
ence with friends on the subject — and when the little 
volume was at last afloat, watching it for a while 
somewhat as a boy watches a paper boat committed to 
the sea." 

Bernard Barton was fortunate in having among his 
correspondents two such letter-writers as Lamb and 
FitzGerald. He himself was a great letter-writer — in a 
way ; and a good many of his letters have lately been 
printed in Mrs. C. B. Johnson's "William Bodham 
Donne and his Friends." A fair specimen of how he 
wrote when in a playful mood is the following, written 
to Donne : 

" I am going to be made a great Man ! Not exactly 
called to the Peerage, but I am not sure the announce- 
ment of such an elevation being in prospect could have 
been more unlooked for. Four of my Townsfolk or 
Neighbours, for two of 'em live out of Woodbridge, are 
building a new Ship, and she is to be launched from 
the Stocks here this month or next under the name of 
The Bernard Barton of Woodbridge. . . . * Think of that, 
Master Ford ! ' If my Bardship never gets me on the 
Muster-roll of Parnassus, it will into the Shipping List ! 
If I fail of being chronicled among the Poets of Great 
Britain by some future Gibber, I shall at any rate be 
registered at Lloyds, along with the Spitfires, Amazons, 
Corsairs, and what not. The astounding fact was made 
known to me by one of the four owners a fortnight ago, 
and I have scarce recovered it yet. I communicated it, 
too abruptly, to poor Edward FitzGerald, just as he was 
going to sit down to dinner with me, and he jumped up, 



30 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

chair and all, taking that and himself into the far corner 
of the room, professing that he could not presume to sit 
at the same table with one about to have a ship named 
after him. I wish I may bear such unlooked-for honour 
with becoming meekness ; if I do, I must thank my 
Quakerism for it, for it would ill befit one of our cloth 
to be uplifted in spirit by such an event." 



CHAPTER III 
WITH CRABBE AT ALDEBURGH 

A sea-wasted shore — Mr, Swinburne at Dunwich — Aldeburgh 
— The boyhood of Crabbe — His parents — School days — Slaughden 
Quay — Its sailors and smugglers — The surgeon's apprentice — 
Sarah Elmy— The quay again — Crabbe sails for London — Returns 
to Aldeburgh — Dr. Crabbe — His visits to Beccles — London again 
—Mr. Dudley North— The Rev. George Crabbe— Curate at Alde- 
burgh — An uncomfortable situation — A ducal chaplaincy— An 
alarm at Aldeburgh — " The Borough " a " magnified " Aldeburgh 
— FitzGerald's admiration of Crabbe — FitzGerald at Aldeburgh — 
Professor Fawcett. 

SOME geologists tell us that East Anglia, at least on 
its eastern side, is a sunken land; and we need 
only turn to the pages of its historians to satisfy our- 
selves that much of what was once East Anglia now 
lies beneath the sea. There was a time when Easton 
Ness, near Southwold, was the easternmost point of 
England ; but it is so no longer. When the Romans 
colonized this country they built at Walton, near 
Felixstowe, a camp which probably rivalled that of 
Burgh Castle in size and strength ; but to-day there 
remains no trace of it, and over its site the waves roll 
incessantly shorewards, to break at the foot of cliffs the 
Romans never knew. All along the coast the shore 
folk tell of the sea's siege and the towns and villages 
the sea has won ; so that about the coast there clings a 
sad kind of romance — that of a wasted land where 
history seems likely to repeat itself in sad stories for 

31 



32 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

shore folk yet unborn. More than anywhere else 
around our sea-girdled land, we feel the spell of this 
romance at Dunwich, once the chief town and port on 
the East Anglian coast, now a shrinking hamlet, whose 
eventful past already seems a part of old mythology. 
Standing on the Dunwich cliffs to-day, one needs a 
poet's imagination to conjure up a picture of the strong- 
walled town that stretched far out into the sea ; and 
the greatest of our living poets, after dwelling for 
a while amid its ruins, has come to our aid — 

" Here, where sharp the sea-bird shrills his ditty, 
Flickering flame-wise through the clear live calm, 

Rose triumphal, crowning all a city, 
Roofs exalted once with prayer and psalm, 

Built of holy hands for holy pity, 
Frank and fruitful as a sheltering palm. 

" Church and hospice wrought in faultless fashion, 
Hall and chancel bounteous and sublime. 

Wide and sweet and glorious as compassion, 
Filled and thrilled with force of choral chime, 

Filled with spirit of prayer and thrilled with passion 
Hailed a God more merciful than Time. 

" Low and loud and long, a voice for ever, 

Sounds the wind's clear story like a song. 
Tomb from tomb the waves devouring sever, 

Dust from dust as years relapse along ; 
Graves where men made sure to rest, and never 

Lie dismantled by the seasons' wrong. 

He * :|c « He 

" Rows on rows and line by line they crumble, 
They that thought for all time through to be. 
Scarce a stone whereon a child might stumble 

Breaks the grim field paced alone of me. 
Earth, and man, and all their Gods wax humble 
Here, where Time brings pasture to the sea." 



WITH CRABBE AT ALDEBURGH 33 

One of the smaller coast towns that have had 
their days of disaster when the swollen tides swept their 
streets and quays is Aldeburgh, where to-day, notwith- 
standing the enterprise which has made the town a 
popular little watering-place, one can still see traces 
of the ravage wrought in bygone days by the sea. Now, 
it chiefly consists of two streets running almost parallel 
with the shore ; formerly there were three streets, but one 
by one, and sometimes half a dozen together, the houses 
of the easternmost were washed away. " As if by a 
miracle," as one writer has said, the quaint old sixteenth- 
century Moot Hall has been spared ; but even now the 
sole protection of the town against incursions of the sea 
is the shingle ridge which stretches along the shore, and 
the ruined houses of Aldeburgh's hamlet of Slaughden 
prove that this sole barrier is at times overcome. The 
town itself has suffered little of late years, and its 
hopeful inhabitants feel confident of its safety from 
encroachment of the sea ; but while it retains and boasts 
of its old Moot Hall, it has to lament the loss of a 
building to which greater interest would attach in its 
having been the birth-place of the poet Crabbe. This 
quaint old house — a typical specimen of a beachman's 
dwelling in the old beach company and smuggling days — 
was one of eleven the sea swept away in 1779, when 
George Crabbe was about twenty-five years old. It 
was first occupied by the poet's grandfather, who was a 
burgess of the town and, in his latter days, its collector 
of customs ; and it is described by the poet's son as 
having had chambers projecting far over the ground 
floor, and small windows, with diamond panes, almost 
impervious to the light. There are still in circulation 

D 



34 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

some prints published by Bernard Barton as representing 
the house in which Crabbe was born, and an engraving 
of this print, by Stanfield, forms the vignette to his 
Life ; but the house there shown was one occupied by 
the Crabbes during a part of the poet's boyhood. 

But although Crabbe's earliest home has disappeared, 
and Aldeburgh itself is so altered that he would scarcely 
recognise it, its old hamlet of Slaughden is very like 
what it was in his day, the oozy shores of the Aide 
have still those characteristics which at once attracted 
and repelled him, and around the ancient borough the 
sterile heaths and stagnant marshlands preserve un- 
altered those features he has so truthfully and vividly 
described. Apart from the changes the seasons bring, 
they have known no change, except that one by one 
the old houses, net-stores, and ramshackle wooden 
warehouses of Slaughden have been washed away or 
have fallen into decay. 

Crabbe's son and biographer, in describing Alde- 
burgh as it was during his father's boyhood, says that it 
was a " poor and wretched " place, with nothing of the 
elegance (!) and gaiety which now characterize it during 
its "season." The parallel streets on the low ground 
were then bordered by " mean and scrambling " houses, 
the abodes of pilots and fishermen. 

"Vessels of all sorts, from the heavy troll-boat to 
the yawl and prame, drawn up along the shore — fisher- 
men preparing their tackle, or sorting their spoil — and 
nearer the gloomy old town hall (the only indication of 
municipal dignity) a few groups of mariners, chiefly 
pilots, taking their quick short walk backwards and 
forwards, every eye watchful of a signal from the offing 



WITH CRABBE AT ALDEBURGH 35 

— such was the squalid scene that first opened on the 
author of * The Village.' Nor was the landscape in the 
vicinity of a more engaging aspect — open commons and 
sterile farms, the soil poor and sandy, the herbage bare 
and rushy, the trees * few and far between,' and withered 
and stunted by the bleak breezes of the sea." 

The following oft-quoted lines describe as faithfully 
to-day as they ever did, much of the country lying 
inland of Aldeburgh — 

" Lo ! where the heath, with withering brake grown o'er, 
Lends the light turf that warms the neighbouring poor ; 
From thence a length of burning sand appears, 
Wliere the thin harvest waves its wither'd ears ; 
Rank weeds, that every art and care defy, 
Reign o'er the land, and rob the blighted rye ; 
There thistles spread their prickly arms afar 
And to the ragged infant threaten war ; 
There poppies, nodding, mock the hope of toil ; 
There the blue bugloss paints the sterile soil ; 
Hardy and high, above the slender sheaf, 
The slimy mallow waves her sickly leaf ; 
O'er the young shoot the charlock throws a shade, 
And clasping tares cling round the sickly blade." 

In almost everything Crabbe wrote the influence of his 
early surroundings can be traced ; even his own home- 
life provided him with some of his saddest scenes of 
domestic distress. 

" He was cradled among the rough sons of the 
ocean," says his son, " a daily witness of unbridled 
passions, and of manners remote from the sameness and 
artificial smoothness of polished society. At home . . . 
he was subject to the caprices of a stern and imperious, 
though not unkindly nature ; and, probably, few whom 
he could familiarly approach but had passed through 



36 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

some of those dark domestic tragedies in which his 
future strength was to be exhibited. The common 
people of Aldeburgh in those days are described as — ■ 

' a wild, amphibious race, 
With sullen woe display'd in every face ; 
Who far from civil arts and social fly, 
And scowl at strangers with suspicious eye.' 

Nor, although the family in which he was born hap- 
pened to be somewhat above the mass in point of 
situation, was the remove so great as to be marked with 
any considerable difference in point of refinement. 
Masculine and robust frames, rude manners, stormy 
passions, laborious days, and occasionally boisterous 
nights of merriment, — among such accompaniments was 
born and reared the Poet of the Poor." 

Crabbe's father, during several years of his life, 
seems to have been glad to turn his hand and abilities 
to anything that would provide him with a bare living. 
At one time he was the keeper of a parish school 
conducted in the porch of the church at Orford, a 
decayed little coast town a few miles south of Alde- 
burgh. Subsequently he became the village school- 
master at Norton, in Norfolk, where he also officiated 
as parish clerk. Then he returned to his native town, 
Aldeburgh, where, after working for many years as 
warehouse-keeper and deputy collector of customs, he 
was finally appointed collector of the salt dues. Soon 
after his return he married a widow of the name of 
Lod dock, whom her grandson says was "a woman of 
the most amiable disposition, mild, patient, affectionate, 
and deeply religious in her turn of mind." George was 
the eldest of six children, five of whom lived to mature 
years. The other, a girl, died in infancy ; and it was 



WITH CRABBE AT ALDEBURGH 37 

chiefly owing to the death of this child, to whom he was 
much devoted, that the father, always a man of violent 
passions, became so soured, gloomy, and savage that 
certain scenes of his home life haunted the poet's 
memory all his days. Until then, notwithstanding his 
excitable nature and lack of self-control, he was a fairly 
considerate husband and father. Although mainly 
interested in the seafaring business of the town, and 
occasionally helping in the management of a fishing- 
boat of which he was part owner, he was not without 
knowledge of literature and a liking for reading. In 
the evening he would read aloud to his family extracts 
from the works of Milton or Young. Unconsciously, 
too, he was responsible for his eldest son's first attempts 
at versifying. He took in regularly "Martin's Philo- 
sophical Magazine," at the end of which was a sheet of 
original, and generally very bad, poetry. These sheets 
the salt-master invariably cut out before sending the 
magazine to be bound, and they became the property of 
George, who tried to imitate some of the verses. 

The salt-master soon recognized in his eldest son 
talents above the average of those of lads of his rank in 
life ; but when his temper had the mastery of him he 
sometimes expressed contempt for George because he 
was less capable than his brothers to compete with 
other boys in the ordinary tasks and amusements of a 
coast town. Especially was he irritated by his inca- 
pacity to share in the management of the fishing-boat 
in which he sometimes took his sons to sea. " That 
boy," he would say, "must be 2. fool. John, and Bob, 
and Will, are all of some use about a boat ; but what 
will that thing ever be good for ? " By the other boys 



38 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

of the place — hardy, reckless, and boisterous youngsters, 
ready to encounter any risks or to be up to any mis- 
chief — George's mild and studious disposition scarcely 
commended itself; nor could they understand how a 
boy who might be playing pirate on the Aide, or in 
make-believe performing the daring exploits of some 
famous smuggler, could be content with reading to old 
and illiterate folk by the evening fireside. As a rule, 
they viewed him with mingled feelings of wonder and 
contempt. One day, when he was walking in the street, 
he chanced to offend a bigger lad, who clenched his fists 
to beat him ; but another boy interfered on Crabbe's 
behalf, with the remark, "You must not meddle with 
him; let him alone, for he ha' got larning." But his 
father, while often impatient of his son's meekness and 
lack of boyish inclinations, could plainly see that he 
had gifts worth cultivating ; and, at a greater expense 
than his own circumstances could well afford, he sent 
him to a good school at Bungay, and afterwards to a 
better one at Stowmarket. 

When he was sent to Stowmarket, it had been 
decided that he should become a surgeon ; but after 
his return to Aldeburgh, some time elapsed before a 
medical man could be found to take him as apprentice, 
and meanwhile his father found employment for him in 
his warehouse on the quay at Slaughden. To many 
lads such work would not have been wholly distasteful, 
seeing that it was carried on amid scenes in which youth 
can usually find abundant interest and entertainment. 
At that time — and it is the same to-day — Slaughden 
Quay was the haunt of the 'longshore fishermen engaged 
in the local fishing for sprats and lobsters, while the 



WITH CRABBE AT ALDEBURGH 39 

crews of a few of the larger boats landed there catches 
of cod and soles. Small coasting craft also made their 
way up the nine miles of the Aide between Orford and 
Aldeburgh, and discharged on the quay their cargoes 
of London goods. Straggling along a narrow stretch 
of shingly beach between the river and the sea, the old 
hamlet of Slaughden seemed simply a settlement of 
seafarers and 'longshore folk for whom its cramped 
accommodation afforded a temporary convenience ; and 
to-day, when one sees how the tidal waters of the river 
fret into its marish margin, and the sea itself has 
destroyed its pebble-built cottages and wrecked its 
wooden stores, it appears wonderful that any part of it 
should survive. In the oozy salt creeks, beside which 
the sea-pink grew and the sea-aster scattered its dingy 
seed-down, abandoned hulks lay rotting in the mud, 
while barges and fishing-boats, with masts aslant, waited 
to be floated by the rising tide. Above the tide-mark 
leaky boats were drawn up, to be overhauled and tarred 
by the men who apart from them had no means of 
livehhood ; in the weather-beaten sheds and stores, 
fishermen with their wives and daughters mended torn 
nets and tattered sails. Around the walls of the old 
cottages the shingle was piled by the waves almost up 
to the sills of the lower windows, and, driven from 
tottering tenements which the next storm would destroy^ 
whole families of fisher-folk had sought shelter in con- 
demned ships, which, dismasted and worm-eaten, lay 
stranded by the riverside. On the higher grounds and 
shingle ridges the sea poppy waved its large yellow 
flowers in the wind, and the rare creeping sea pea 
brightened the barren soil with its purple blossoms ; 



40 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

there, too, the creaking tern and the piping ringed 
plover hollowed out their simple nests ; but down by 
the quay the hamlet wore a less attractive aspect. 

" Here samphire banks and saltwort bound the flood, 
There stakes and seaweed withering on the mud ; 
And higher up a ridge of all things base, 
Which some strong tide has roll'd upon the place." 

The quay, the shingly footpaths, and the net-stores 
were the haunts of ancient mariners ; but their principal 
meeting-place, and the scene of many a noisy carousal, 
was the old inn which faced the river and turned its 
back on the sea. There the smugglers came — some 
boastful and boisterous, others silent and mysterious — 
and the youth of Aldeburgh, who had no better heroes, 
gazed at them with awe, and longed for the time when 
they themselves would be able to' share in their 
dangerous enterprises. There, too, on stormy nights, 
when the roaring of the sea almost drowned the voices 
of the company seated on the old wooden benches, and 
with every new-comer to the inn there entered a wind- 
gust which seemed likely to burst asunder the walls of 
the old house, tales were told of wreck and rescue, sea- 
fighting and buccaneering ; men who had fought under 
Vernon and Anson, told of the attack on Carthagena 
and the plundering of Paita, while others held their 
hearers breathless by recounting the doings of Clive in 
India or of Wolfe before Quebec. And at times, when 
the horrors of the many conflicts in which England had 
been engaged during the first half of the eighteenth 
century had been dwelt upon by returned adventurers 
for the benefit of home-staying folk, sudden alarm 
would seize upon the inhabitants of Slaughden at the 



WITH CRABBE AT ALDEBURGH 41 

sight of some strange sail in the offing, and the fear 
that it might prove to be that of a " Frenchman," made 
an uneasy Slaughden so long as the sail remained in 
sight. Even to-day, as one rambles in the neighbour- 
hood of the Three Mariners Inn — that quaint old inn 
with the bone of an extinct monster for a sign-board — 
the aspect and atmosphere of Slaughden seem to 
connect it with the romance of the old buccaneering 
and cargo-running days. 

" Yon is our Quay ! those smaller hoys from town, 
Its various ware, for country use, bring down ; 
Those laden waggons, in return, impart 
The country-produce to the city mart ; 
Hark to the clamour of that miry road. 
Bounded and narrow'd by yon vessel's load ; 
The lumbering wealth she empties round the place, 
Package, and parcel, hogshead, chest, and case : 
While the loud seaman and the angry hind. 
Mingling in business, bellow to the wind. 

Near these a crew amphibious, in the docks. 
Rear for the sea, those castles on the stocks : 
See ! the long keel, which soon the waves must hide ; 
See ! the strong ribs which form the roomy side j 
Bolts yielding slowly to the sturdiest stroke, 
And planks which curve and crackle in the smoke. 
Around the whole rise cloudy wreaths, and far 
Bear the warm pungence of o'er-boiling tar. 

Dabbling on shore half-naked sea-boys crowd. 
Swim round the ship, or swing upon the shroud ; 
Or in a boat purloin'd, with paddles play, 
And grow familiar with the watery way : 
Young though they be, they feel whose sons they are, 
They know what British seamen do and dare ; 
Proud of that fame, they raise and they enjoy 
The rustic wonder of the village boy." 

So wrote Crabbe of Slaughden Quay when his days 



42 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

of tub-rolling and goods-storing had long been at an 
end ; and it is evident that its familiar scenes remained 
firmly imprinted on his mind ; but while those days 
lasted he hated their drudgery and found no recompense 
for it in the curious life and associations of the old 
hamlet between the river and the sea. So it was with 
relief that he at length, after replying to an advertise- 
ment, and having his proffered services accepted, set 
out on a drive across country to the little village of 
Wickhambrook, ready to commence his duties as 
apprentice to a master who combined farming with the 
practice of medicine. 

With this practitioner he remained for three years ; 
but it is doubtful whether he received any benefit from 
his instruction. Although professedly apprenticed to 
medicine, he was often employed on his master's farm, 
and at night he had the ploughboy for a bed-fellow. 
From Wickhambrook he went to Woodbridge, to con- 
clude his apprenticeship with another doctor, Page by 
name. There his days were more pleasantly and advan- 
tageously spent ; while there, too, he fell in love with 
Sarah Elmy, his " Mira," to whom he wrote lyrics as 
numerous as his employer's prescriptions ; but at the 
termination of his apprenticeship, towards the end of 
1775, he returned to Aldeburgh to find the affairs of 
his family in such a state as to afford him slight hope 
of completing his professional education. Led to par- 
ticipate in intemperate conviviality during a Parlia- 
mentary election, his father had become a regular 
frequenter of the local taverns, with the result that his 
violent temper was often inflamed by excessive drinking 
and the home life of his family was most miserable. 



WITH CRABBE AT ALDEBURGH 43 

His wife was already afflicted with the illness of which 
she died after a few years of suffering ; but notwith- 
standing this he often terrified her by his violent and 
brutal conduct ; and had it not been for the care and 
affection bestowed upon her by her eldest son, her 
declining years would have been almost without a 
gleam of brightness to relieve their gloom. George had 
no sooner taken up his abode again beneath his father's 
roof than he saw that his mother's illness must have a 
fatal ending, and he at once became her physician and 
comforter. 

His intention, however, was to take the first oppor- 
tunity to go to London and there complete his studies ; 
and it was with dismay he realized that his father's 
circumstances would not permit of this, and that his 
only immediate prospect of earning a livelihood, and 
of contributing in a measure towards his mother's com- 
fort, lay in the direction of the much-loathed Slaughden 
Quay. Yet there he had to go once more, don the garb 
of a dock labourer, and devote his time to rolling to and 
fro the detested butter-tubs. Nor was his dislike of the 
work lessened by the consciousness that the acquaint- 
ances he had made while at Woodbridge were aware of 
the kind of labour he — the would-be physician — was 
engaged in. But the hard necessities of his case com- 
pelled him to pocket his pride and submit to the jibes 
of his erstwhile comrades. During his leisure hours he 
occupied himself with the natural history of the seashore, 
heaths, and salt marshes, and especially with the study of 
botany, thereby acquiring much of that knowledge of 
birds and flowers which afterwards enabled him to picture 
so faithfully the wild life and scenery of his home-land. 



44 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

After some months had been passed in uncongenial 
occupation, a small sum of money was scraped together, 
and he sailed for London on board one of the little 
trading craft which visited Slaughden Quay ; but in less 
than twelve months he was back again, having found it 
impossible, with his slender means, to make any head- 
way in town. He then sought and found employment 
in the shop of a local surgeon and apothecary named 
Maskill, a stern and despotic man from whom he 
received most galling treatment. Indeed, at the outset 
of their business relations, Crabbe was unfortunate 
enough to offend grievously this fiery medico by spell- 
ing his name Mask-well. " Damn you, sir," exclaimed 
the irate man, " do you take me for a proficient in 
deception ? Mask-/// — Mask-//// and so you shall find 
me." But not many weeks elapsed before Mr. Maskill 
decided to transfer himself to another town, and, feeling, 
in all probability, that he would never be more fitted 
than he was then to commence such operations, George 
ventured to step into the deserted practice. He had, 
however, a clever and active practitioner to contend 
with for a share of Aldeburgh's patronage, and he was 
unequal to the contest. 

"His very passion for botany," says his son, "was 
injurious to him ; for his ignorant patients, seeing 
him return from his walks with handfuls of weeds, 
decided that, as Dr. Crabbe got his medicines in the 
ditches, he could have little claim for payment. On 
the other hand, he had many poor relations ; and 
some of these, old women, were daily visitors, to 
request 'something comfortable from cousin George;' 
that is to say, doses of the most expensive tonics in 
his possession." 



WITH CRABBE AT ALDEBURGH 45 

Occasionally fortune smiled on him for a brief 
while, as when the Warwickshire Militia, and afterwards 
the Norfolk Militia, were quartered in the town and he 
was appointed their medical attendant : by the Colonel 
of the Warwickshires, Conway, the cousin of Horace 
Walpole, he was presented with some valuable books on 
botany. But the intervals of sunshine were rare in 
those overcast years, and only the steady affection of 
his " Mira," and the stimulus of his mother's needs, kept 
him from sinking into despair. 

At this time Miss Elmy, though living with her 
uncle at Parham, occasionally visited her parents at 
Beccles, and the happiest episodes of Crabbe's life during 
the long years of their courtship were his meetings with 
her in the little town on the banks of the Waveney. 
To enjoy the sweet companionship of this faithful girl, 
the ardent lover would walk the long distance from 
Aldeburgh to Beccles, through scenery he has described 
in his " Lover's Journey." 

" First o'er a barren heath, beside the coast, 
Orlando rode, and joy began to boast. 

' This neat low gorse,' said he, ' with golden bloom, 
Delights each sense, is beauty, is perfume ; 
And this gay ling, with all its purple flowers, 
A man of leisure might admire for hours ; 
This green-fringed cup-moss has a scarlet tip. 
That yields to nothing but my Laura's lip ; 
And then how fine this herbage ! men may say 
A heath is barren ; nothing is so gay.' " 

But he must have been a slow-footed lover who, 
starting when the ling was flowering, saw the "snow- 
white bloom " fall " flaky from the thorn " before he 
reached his journey's end ; and it was unworthy of so 



46 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

skilled a botanist as Crabbe to take advantage of " poetic 
license " to the extent of making so many spring and 
autumn wild flowers bloom together as he does in the 
" Lover's Journey." 

The Life of Crabbe written by his son is one of the 
best of biographies ; but there are one or two points in 
respect to the poet's career not made quite clear, and 
one of these is his precise reason for suddenly making 
up his mind to abandon Aldeburgh and the medical 
profession and embark on so uncertain an enterprise as 
going to London again with the idea of gaining a liveli- 
hood by writing poetry. But like George Borrow some 
fifty years later, he seems to have suddenly made up his 
mind to venture on what must have seemed to him a 
" forlorn hope " ; and there is at least a possibility that 
the solution of the secret might have been found in 
"Mira." Miss Elmy, we are told, "was too prudent to 
marry, where there seemed to be no chance of a com- 
petent livelihood," and it may be that, finding her firm 
in this decision, and seeing no prospect of success 
rewarding his drudgery in his native town, he decided 
to try his fortune in a wider sphere. 

" One gloomy day, towards the close of the year 
1779," writes his son, "he had strolled to a bleak and 
cheerless part of the cliff above Aldeburgh, called ' The 
Marsh Hill,' brooding, as he went, over the humiliating 
necessities of his condition, and plucking every now and 
then, I have no doubt, the hundredth specimen of some 
common weed. He stopped opposite a shallow, muddy 
piece of water, as desolate and gloomy as his own mind, 
called the Leech-pond, and 'it was while I gazed on it,' 
— he said to my brother and me, one happy morning, — 
* that I determined to go to London and venture all.' " 



WITH CRABBE AT ALDEBURGH 47 

Having come to this decision, he wrote to Mr. Dudley- 
North, brother of the candidate for Aldeburgh, begging 
the loan of a small sum to enable him to carry out his 
purpose. A " very extraordinary letter it was," Mr. 
North remarked to him some years afterwards : " I did 
not hesitate for a moment." The sum he received was 
five pounds ; and after settling his affairs in Aldeburgh, 
George, with a box of clothes, a small case of surgical 
instruments, and three pounds in his pocket, sailed for 
London on board the lugger Unity, which was then 
owned by the grandfather of the late Archdeacon 
Hindes Groome. 

It is wonderful that a shy, uncouth, and unsuccessful 
countryman should have started on such a venture ; it 
is even more wonderful that, going to London friendless 
and with no means of bringing his talents before the 
public, he, in less than two years, should have made his 
mark as a man of letters, firmly established himself in 
the friendship and confidence of some of the most 
distinguished and influential men of his day, and, not- 
withstanding his being to a large extent a self-educated 
man, qualified himself for, and been admitted to, deacon's 
orders. A few months later he was ordained a priest 
in Norwich Cathedral, and, probably at his own request, 
licensed as curate to the rector of his native town. The 
amazement of Aldeburgh at his reappearance under 
such circumstances must have been great, and there 
were times when Crabbe himself could hardly realize 
that he was not dreaming. That he, the despised quay 
labourer and rejected apothecary, should now be pointed 
out as the friend of such men as Burke, Fox, and Sir 
Joshua Reynolds, was alone some recompense for the 



48 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

slights to which he had been subjected ; and Crabbe 
would have been more than human if he had not felt 
some pride in his changed condition. But he seems to 
have preserved his mental balance well under circum- 
stances calculated to upset his judgment, and it was 
not long before he found out that in selecting Aldeburgh 
to be the scene of his first ministries as a clergyman he 
had chosen anything but a " bed of roses." Indeed, the 
reception he met with was far from cordial, and he soon 
discovered that while some might point to him as the 
friend of distinguished men, others — and these were 
more numerous — were only reminded by the sight of 
him of butter-tubs and black draughts. Every old 
adventure in which he had cut a sorry figure was raked 
up against him ; nor were those who laughed at him 
particular as to the truth of the story. Years after, 
on being asked how he felt when he entered the pulpit 
at Aldeburgh for the first time, he said : — " I had been 
unkindly received at the place — I saw unfriendly faces 
about me, and, I am sorry to say, I had too much 
indignation, though mingled, I hope, with better feelings, 
to care what they thought of me or my sermon." Had 
he stayed in the town, no doubt he would have " lived 
down " his dismal past ; but during the few months 
which elapsed between his appointment to the curacy 
and his acceptance of the domestic chaplaincy of 
Belvoir, the Rev. George Crabbe was unable to banish 
from the recollection of his parishioners that Dr. Crabbe 
who had sometimes tried to drive away despondency 
by joining in convivial gatherings at the old White 
Lion inn. 

This fact, together with the sustained prudence of 



WITH CRABBE AT ALDEBURGH 49 

Miss Elmy, who considered a curate as bad a match as 
an unsuccessful surgeon, caused Crabbe to accept 
without hesitation the Duke of Rutland's offer of the 
chaplaincy ; and, after taking his departure from 
Aldeburgh under these circumstances, his appearances 
in the town, though not infrequent, were chiefly due to 
holiday visits. But during several years of his life — 
after his " Mira " had at last consented to share his im- 
proved fortunes — he was a resident within a few miles of 
his old coast-town, and in another chapter something more 
will be said about his associations with his native county. 
At the time, however, when his home was at Rendham, 
he had at least one interesting experience at Aldeburgh, 
and that was when the firing of some guns at sea, and 
the loud report of a big alarm-gun in the martello tower 
at Slaughden, caused the inhabitants of the town to 
believe that the French were about to attempt a landing 
on their shingly beach. The poet, we are told, was 
informed of this supposed imminent danger ; but less 
than an hour after he had heard the news he was dis- 
covered fast asleep ; on hearing of which indifference or 
passive submission to fate, there were "suspicious head- 
shakings among the ultra-loyalists " of the town. But 
as he grew older, and the few links which bound him 
to Aldeburgh snapped one by one, he had less and less 
inclination to revisit the scenes amid which the most 
miserable days of his life had been passed. About 
twelve months before his death, he wrote to a Beccles 
friend — 

" I should rejoice to revisit Beccles, where every one 
is kind to me, and where every object I view has the 
appearance of friendship and welcome. Beccles is the 



50 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

home of past years, and I could not walk through 
the streets as a stranger. It is not so at Aldeburgh : 
there a sadness mixes with all I see or hear ; not a 
man is living whom I knew in my early portion of life ; 
my contemporaries are gone, and their successors are 
unknown to me and I to them. Yet, in my last visit, 
my niece and I passed an old man, and she said, 
' There is one you should know ; you played together 
as boys, and he looks as if he wanted to tell you so.' 
Of course, I stopped on my way, and Zekiel Thorpe 
and I became once more acquainted. This is sadly 
tedious to you ; but you need not be told that old men 
love to dwell upon their Recollections." 

In Aldeburgh parish church there is a bust of 
Crabbe, and in the churchyard, just under the east wall 
of the church, are the simple gravestones marking where 
his parents are buried ; but the Aldeburgh of to-day so 
little resembles the Aldeburgh of a century ago that 
it is of little use attempting to see in it the scenes 
described in the poet's "Village" and "Borough." Indeed, 
** The Borough," though commenced during a visit to his 
native town, treats of a far larger place than Aldeburgh 
can ever have been, even in its palmiest days, when the 
sea had as yet made no inroads upon its low-lying 
streets ; and although some of the characters in the 
poem were probably drawn from men and women 
Crabbe had met there, he has placed them in what a 
friend of his called a " magnified Aldeburgh," and it is 
only at Slaughden and in the country lying inland, 
northward, and southward of the old sea-wasted town 
that we find ourselves amid scenes we can recognize as 
having been finely and faithfully described by him. 
For the salt marsh shores of the tidal Aide, the fen-like 



WITH CRABBE AT ALDEBURGH 51 

lowlands lying inland of the Crag Path leading from 
the town to Thorpe, and the sandy heaths of the higher 
lands, are much as they were when Crabbe knew them 
and, wandering there, found relief from his despondency 
in dreams of love and fame. And it is his pictures of 
these scenes which make his East Anglian admirers 
appreciate him as a Suffolk, as well as an English poet. 
For a true poet he was, though the world would be 
none the poorer if it lost more than half of what he 
printed. Notwithstanding all that has been urged 
against him by his many detractors, he has written 
much that will "live," and his unperverted realism will 
always be valued by those who in poetry seek truth 
before pleasing imagery. 

" Give him the darkest inch your shelf allows, 
Hide him in lonely garrets, if you will — 
But his hard human pulse is throbbing still 
With the sure strength that fearless truth endows, 
In spite of all fine science disavows. 
Of his plain excellence and stubborn skill 
There yet remains what fashion cannot kill, 
Though years have thinned the laurel from his brows. 
Whether or not we read him, we can feel 
From time to time the vigour of his name 
Against us like a finger for the shame 
And emptiness of what our souls reveal 
In books that are as altars where we kneel 
To consecrate the flicker, not the flame." ^ 

Edward FitzGerald, a critic not without his pre- 
judices, but, for all that, one with keen insight and 
delicate feeling, always had a great admiration for the 
writings of Crabbe, mainly because he himself was a 

^ Edward Arlington Robinson, 



52 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

lover of that homely life in describing which the poet 
excelled. He brought out a little book entitled " Read- 
ings from Crabbe," because he felt that he v/as not appre- 
ciated as he should be, and that that was because few 
readers had the patience to seek out what was best in 
him. All his life he was fond of dipping into Crabbe's 
works and quoting him to his friends, and, although he 
loved Aldeburgh for itself — " There is no sea like the 
Aldeburgh sea. It talks to me," he once said — it was 
as the birthplace of the poet and the scene of his early 
troubles and trials, that it had its chief appeal to him. 
He used to say that he had lodged in half the houses 
in the town at one time or another ; but he generally 
stayed at the White Lion or at Clare Cottage, where 
he hired two small rooms and a spare bedroom for any 
of his friends who might choose to visit him. Slaughden 
Quay was one of his favourite haunts. ** The melancholy 
of Slaughden last night, with the same sloops sticking 
sidelong in the mud as sixty years ago ! " he wrote to 
Charles Keene, in July, 1880. Once he met here an 
ancient mariner who had sailed on board the lugger 
Unity, in which Crabbe went up to London, though not, 
of course, until some years later. Here he came with 
Carlyle during the latter's visit to Woodbridge ; and 
here, too, he made the acquaintance of Professor 
Fawcett, the Postmaster-General, whom he was always 
delighted to see, blind as he was, "stalking along the 
beach, regardless of pebble and boulder, though with 
some one by his side to prevent his going quite to sea ; " 
and in the course of their walks and talks together, he 
made him a worshipper of Crabbe. 

There are still a few people in Aldeburgh who can 



WITH CRABBE AT ALDEBURGH 53 

remember seeing FitzGerald slowly pacing the Crag 
Path between the salt marsh and the sea. It was at 
Aldeburgh that he read Cunningham's "Darien Song" — 

" Oh there were white hands wav'd, 
And many a parting hail, 
As their vessel stemm'd the tide, 
And stretch'd the snowy sail ; " 

and afterwards, whenever he read it, he found that 
" the sound of the sea hangs about it always, as upon 
the lips of a shell." In later years he thought Alde- 
burgh " half spoilt," owing to the many new houses 
built to accommodate its increasing number of summer 
visitors ; but the old names of the salt creeks, cliff clefts, 
and sandbanks continued to have for him a romantic 
suggestiveness. 

" I have, like you, always have, and from a child had, 
a mysterious feeling about the ' Sizewell Gap,' " he wrote 
to Keene. "There were reports of kegs of Hollands 
found under the Altar Cloth of Theberton Church near 
by, and we children looked with awe on the ' Revenue 
Cutters ' which passed Aldbro', especially remembering 
one that went down with all hands, The Rangery 

FitzGerald paid his last visit to Aldeburgh in the 
September before his death. About that time he 
renewed his friendship with a play-mate of his child- 
hood, a Miss Lynn, who lived here in a house called 
" Tiffany." The renewal of this friendship is described 
by his biographer as " the last bright gleam of his life." 
With Miss Lynn he talked of old days at Aldeburgh ; 
of her uncle, his old friend Major Moor ; and at times 
she would read to him from what he called her " Mudie 



54 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

Books." He gave her copies of some of his writings ; 
but he would not include among them the "Omar 
Khayyam," telling her that "she would not like it." 
" He was very careful," said Miss Lynn after his death, 
" not to unsettle the religious opinions of others." 



CHAPTER IV 
IN AND ABOUT FRAMLINGHAM 

The small towns of Suffolk — A royal town — Framlingham 
Castle — Bernard Barton — The Howards, Dukes of Norfolk — Henry 
Howard, Earl of Surrey — His birthplace — His boyhood — His 
marriage — " The most foolish proud boy that is in England " — The 
King's favour — Disgrace — Sir Thomas Wyatt — Surrey at Norwich 
— Thomas Churchyard — Surrey charged with high treason — Con- 
demned and executed — His tomb in Framlingham Church — 
John Cordy Jeaffreson — " Literary Framlingham " — Thackeray — 
Andrew Arcedeckne — The original of Mr. Foker. 

SUFFOLK is a county of small towns which are little 
more than villages, and apart from those among 
them which are situated on the coast, and in consequence 
are disturbed from their accustomed somnolence in 
summer by invading hosts of holiday-makers, these 
little old-world towns seem so out of touch with modern 
life that a stranger no sooner enters one of them than 
he becomes conscious of influences being exerted 
which help him to understand what provincial life was 
like, not only in the coaching days, but in days when 
during the greater part of each year the highways and 
byways of rural England were in such a state that a 
regularly organized system of road travelling was a 
convenience undreamt of even by the most enterprising 
minds. Over the narrow streets the upper storeys 

55 



56 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

of old, half-timbered houses bend as though seeking 
support, after centuries of top-heaviness, against the walls 
across the way ; on the plastered shop fronts, on the 
brackets of the projecting latticed windows, and in the 
spandrels of old doorways leading into panelled halls 
and stone-paved courts, there are curious heraldic 
carvings reminding one of lords and abbots of feudal 
times ; here and there stands a guildhall almost un- 
altered since it was founded ; and not infrequently the 
massive fragments of a Norman castle amid huge 
earthworks establishes for the place an antiquity to 
which many a thronged city has no claim. On market- 
day, when the old-fashioned farm-folk with corn samples 
in their pockets come to shake their heads over some 
" new-fangled " American farming implement exhibited 
near the market cross or before the corn hall, there is 
some slight stir in the usually silent streets, and country 
customers summon the listless tradesman from his 
" living-room " behind the shop ; but the stir is of as 
temporary duration as the breeze which sometimes 
ripples a calm lake on a sultry summer day : it soon 
passes, and all is still again. To say that these old 
towns are " behind the times " is to tell only half the 
truth. Some of them seem to have lost all inclination 
to advance with the times hundreds of years ago. 

One of the smaller of these ancient towns — its popu- 
lation is well under three thousand — is Framlingham ; 
and the fact of its being the terminus of a little branch 
line of railway which starts off into the wilds of Mid 
Suffolk, and then stops suddenly as though alarmed at 
its temerity, can hardly be put forward by it as a pre- 
tension to active importance or wide renown. Yet 



IN AND ABOUT FRAMLINGHAM 57 

Framlingham, if the tradition be credible, was once the 
royal town of an East Anglian king ; later on it was the 
stronghold of the Bigods — the most turbulent and influ- 
ential baronial family in the eastern counties ; and at the 
death of Edward VI. its grand old castle — beside which 
the town seems dwarfed into insignificance — became 
the rallying-point of the English Catholics, who came 
to Framlingham to offer their services to Princess Mary, 
and soon afterwards placed her on the Throne. To-day 
you may often stroll from end to end of the town in 
broad daylight without seeing more than a dozen people, 
and even at midday so deep a silence broods over the 
place that one can hardly believe it has ever awakened 
from an age-long sleep ; but to stand directly under the 
walls of that mighty castle of the Earls and Dukes of 
Norfolk — that castle in the shadow of which the little 
town lies like a suppliant at the feet of one of the 
great ones of the earth — is to be reminded of some 
of the most important events in English history, and 
of associations of which not only Framlingham, but 
all East Anglia, may well be proud. Her Quaker 
poet, Bernard Barton, wrote very few verses which 
were destined to outlive him ; but in writing of Fram- 
lingham Castle he at least caught something of the 
spirit of the place — 

" But thou, at least to distant view, 

Still bear'st a gallant form, 
Thy canopy — Heaven's vault of blue, 

Or crest — the lowering storm. 
Still upon moat and mere below 

Thine ivied towers look down, 
And far their giant shadows throw, 

With feudal grandeur's frown. 



58 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

" And though thy star for aye be set, 

Thy glory past and gone ; 
Fancy might deem thine inmate yet 

Bigod or Brotherton ! 
Or Howard brave, who fought and died 

On Bosworth's bloody field ; 
Or bigot Mary — who the tide 

Of martyr blood unseal'd." 

After the manor of Framlingham was granted to the 
Bigods by Henry I., the castle was for several centuries 
the home of a succession of Earls and Dukes of Norfolk, 
who took a prominent part in war and politics, insur- 
rection, and intrigue. First there were the Bigods, who 
were nearly always in revolt against the Crown. Then, 
after being held for a while by a son of Edward L, the 
possession of the castle passed by marriage to that 
William de Ufford, Earl of Suffolk, who died suddenly in 
the Parliament House at Westminster in 1381 ; and from 
him it passed to a Mowbray who died at Venice about 
1399. A little later we find it held by that famous old 
soldier, Sir Thomas Erpingham, who fought at Agincourt ; 
and he was succeeded by another Mowbray, who, con- 
demned on a charge of rebellion, was beheaded at York. 
Several subsequent generations of Mowbrays dwelt within 
its massive walls, the last representative of the family here 
being that little Lady Anne, who, when only three years 
old, was espoused to that Richard, Duke of York, who 
with his brother was murdered in the Tower. Then it 
was that the Howards came upon the scene, and the first 
of them to possess Framlingham was that John Howard, 
Duke of Norfolk, who died on Bosworth Field ; but ere 
long a far more famous military leader in the victor 
of Flodden had his home in the grey old castle. And 



IN AND ABOUT FRAMLINGHAM 59 

until 1635, when the castle was sold to Sir Robert 
Hitcham, the powerful Howards held this ancient strong- 
hold, save during the frequent intervals in which one or 
another of them was under suspicion of having designs 
against the Crown. 

These associations with Framlingham of the names 
of men who distinguished themselves in plotting and 
fighting, sometimes for and sometimes against the 
Crown, would have no immediate interest for us if it 
were not that among the many famous Howards there 
was one who distinguished himself in the domain of 
letters as well as on the battlefield. This was Henry 
Howard, Earl of Surrey, for whom it is claimed that he 
may justly be regarded as the first English classical poet. 
That he spent much of his time at Framlingham seems 
improbable, for he had other homes in East Anglia which 
must have been far more convenient and comfortable 
than the old moated castle ; but he was often in Suffolk, 
as well as in Norfolk, and it was to Framlingham that 
his body was brought to find a final resting-place, though 
not till long after his execution. 

Surrey was a Suffolk man by birth, for he was born 
at Tendring Hall, in the parish of Stoke-by-Nayland ; 
but he was known in his early life as Henry Howard of 
Kenninghall, after the great Norfolk ducal palace which 
has long been destroyed. Of the first few years of his 
life we know little, save that he seems to have spent the 
greater part of them at Tendring Hall, where the daily 
nursery fare consisted of a " racke or cheyne of mutton 
and a checkyn," save on Fridays and Saturdays, when 
he and his brothers and sisters had to be content with 
"a dyshe of buttermylke and six egges." Occasionally 



60 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

he visited his grandfather at Hunsdon, in Hertfordshire, 
or at Kenninghall ; and when he was about twelve years 
old we hear of him as a guest at the old priory at Butley, 
in Suffolk, where he went while his father was arranging 
the sale of that fine old tract of oak forest, Staverton 
Park, to the prior. Much care appears to have been 
taken over his education, especially in classical and 
modern literature ; and it is thought likely that he had 
the advantage of the assistance of John Leland, the 
eminent antiquary, who was his brother's tutor, though 
his own special instructor seems to have been John 
Clerk, who was domesticated with the Howard family. 
In the same year that Surrey was at Butley, Henry VIII. 
asked that he might be sent to Windsor to become the 
companion of Henry Fitzroy, Earl of Richmond, the 
king's natural son ; and, the Duke of Norfolk consenting, 
the youthful poet took up his residence amid those 
scenes with which Pope associated him when he 
wrote — 

" Here noble Surrey felt the sacred rage ; 
Surrey, the Granville of a former age : 
Matchless his pen, victorious vi^as his lance, 
Bold in the lists, and graceful in the dance : 
In the same shades the Cupids tun'd his lyre, 
To the same notes of love and soft desire." 

Three years later Surrey was married to Frances, 
daughter of John Vere, fifteenth Earl of Oxford, who 
had a seat at the old cloth-weaving town of Lavenham, 
only a few miles from Tendring Hall. Owing to their 
youth, however, the young husband and wife did not 
live together until 1535, when they met at Kenninghall, 
where, finding himself in financial difficulties, Surrey 



IN AND ABOUT FRAMLINGHAM 61 

seems to have started housekeeping on money borrowed 
from the Abbot of Bury. 

Although described by a contemporary as " the 
most foolish, proud boy that is in England," and not- 
withstanding that he seems to have been a hot-tempered 
and headstrong youth, Surrey was for some years high 
in the King's favour. As Southey tells us, he was, 
in the year of his marriage, one of the nobles who 
accompanied Henry to his interview with the French 
king at Boulogne, and at the coronation of Anne Boleyn 
he acted for his father as Lord High Chamberlain. 
But— 

" that was an age in which a dear price was paid for 
pre-eminence in rank. Anne Boleyn was his kins- 
woman and friend ; yet Surrey was compelled to appear 
at her iniquitous trial, as representing his father in the 
character of Earl Marshal ; the Duke in his own person 
presiding as Lord High Steward. He was one of the 
chief mourners at the funeral of Queen Jane, and one of 
the defendants at the jousts upon the marriage of Queen 
Anne of Cleves. Soon afterwards he was made Knight 
of the Garter. This was the season of his highest 
favour. It was followed by disgrace and imprisonment 
for having challenged John a Leigh, of Stockwell, upon 
a private quarrel. On his release he accompanied his 
father to the war in Scotland, and was present when 
Kelsall was burnt. He had then to answer before the 
Privy Council upon two charges : the one was for eating 
meat in Lent ; the other for breaking windows in the 
streets of London with a cross-bow in the dead of night. 
For the first he pleaded a licence, but confessed that he 
had made use of it too publicly ; for the second he 
made the strange excuse that being shocked at the 
licentiousness of the citizens, he thought that by thus 
alarming them he might put them in mind of the 



62 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

suddenness of God's judgments, and so awaken them to 
repentance." 

In his window-breaking mischief he was assisted by 
his great friend and brother poet, Sir Thomas Wyatt, 
who was thirteen years his senior and should have 
known better. At any rate, such an escapade hardly 
fits in with Tennyson's description of Wyatt as — 

" Courtier of many courts, he loved the more 
His own grey towers, plain hfe, and lettered peace, 
To read and rhyme in solitary fields, 
The lark above, the nightingale below, 
And answer them in song." 

Soon after his marriage Surrey had a house in 
Norwich called Surrey House, situated in a street which 
still goes by his name ; but about two years before his 
death, and about the time when he was engaged as 
marshal of the army at the siege of Montreuil, there 
was built for him a fine palace on the site of St. 
Leonard's Priory, on Household Heath, near Norwich. 
There, it is believed, he had as a page the soldier-poet 
Thomas Churchyard, whom D'Israeli describes as "one 
of those unfortunate men who had written poetry all 
their days and lived a long life to complete the mis- 
fortune." But Surrey was fated to spend little time in 
his new home on the breezy heath above the ancient 
Norfolk city ; for after being deprived of his command 
in France — a disgrace he owed to the jealousy of the 
Seymours and their influence with the King — he was 
imprisoned in Windsor Castle. He was soon released, 
and appeared to have regained the King's favour ; but 
the Seymours continued their plotting against him and 



IN AND ABOUT FRAMLINGHAM 63 

his father the Duke, and on December 12, 1546, he was 
committed to the Tower on the charge of high treason. 
The legal ground on which this preposterous charge 
was based was a section of some recent statutes which 
made it high treason " to do anything, by word, writing, 
or deed, to the scandal or peril of the established succes- 
sion to the Crown ; " but the only act on his part which 
could be urged against him was his having adopted the 
armorial bearing of Edward the Confessor, which had 
hitherto been used only by the Kings of England. 
Surrey defended himself with eloquence and spirit. He 
proved that the arms had been assigned to him by the 
heralds, and that he had worn them for fourteen years 
without giving offence ; but the fact of his having worn 
them was taken as sufficient evidence that he had 
aspired to the throne. Among the witnesses who were 
compelled to give evidence against him was his father's 
mistress, who could only say that the Duke had blamed 
his son for want of skill in quartering the family arms 
and had spoken with warmth against the " new nobility," 
meaning the Seymours. But the prosecutors were not 
content with this. The prisoner's sister, the Duchess of 
Richmond, was brought up to confirm the statement 
that her father and her brother had spoken ill of the 
"new nobility," and to declare that Surrey had worn 
on his arms, instead of the ducal coronet, what she took 
to be a close crown and " the King's cipher, H.R." On 
this evidence Surrey was condemned to death, and it is 
far from creditable to Norfolk that among the names of 
the twelve jurymen are those of representatives of the 
ancient county families of Paston, Boleyn, Wodehouse, 
L'Estrange, Hobart, and Bedingfeld. At the time 



64 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

when the trial was going on, King Henry was lying on 
his death-bed, and, as Sir James Mackintosh says, " as 
the King's sick-bed was surrounded by Surrey's enemies i 
it must always be uncertain whether the hand of Henry 
was, even in the lowest bodily sense, affixed to the 
instrument which warranted the execution ; " but, how- 
ever that may have been, the death warrant was signed, 
and about a week after his trial the unfortunate young 
soldier and poet died on the scaffold. His body was 
first interred in the church of All Hallows, Barking, in 
Tower Street; but in the year 1614 his second son 
Henry, Earl of Northampton, caused it to be brought 
to Framlingham and buried in the chancel of the 
parish church, where he erected a fine tomb to his 
memory. On this tomb there are recumbent effigies of 
Surrey and his wife, while at the ends are kneeling 
figures of their two sons and three daughters. Accord- 
ing to Miss Agnes Strickland, the historian of the 
Queens of England, "the portrait statue of the son 
kneeling at the feet of his father's recumbent statue . . . 
proves him, and such is the fact, to have resembled his 
relative Queen Anne Boleyn. His dark eyes and dark 
curls, and the beautiful outline of his face, rendered him 
more like her than was her daughter. Queen Elizabeth." 
Owing to a lack of the sum necessary to restore it, 
the spacious chancel of Framlingham Church is in a 
sad state of dilapidation, and it is now boarded off from 
the nave in which the services are held ; but the mag- 
nificent tombs of the Howards are in good preservation. 
Indeed, the chancel maybe looked upon as a mausoleum 
of that ancient and famous family ; for besides the 
tomb of the Earl of Surrey (which has the more westerly 




^ - 
in s 



Q" o 

> ° 

O i2 

rs a 

S ° 



^ <i 



IN AND ABOUT FRAMLINGHAM 65 

position of two on the north side) there is that of his 
father Thomas Howard, third Duke of Norfolk, who 
but for the death of Henry VHI. would have met with 
the fate of his unhappy son. This tomb has fine effigies 
of the Duke and his second wife, his first wife, Anne, 
daughter of Edward IV., being in all probability buried 
in Lambeth Chapel. Another tomb is surmounted by 
effigies of the two wives of the fourth duke, and close 
beside it is interred his daughter Elizabeth, while 
immediately north of the altar is the tomb of Henry the 
Eighth's natural son, Henry Fitzroy, Earl of Richmond, 
the early friend and companion of Surrey. He is 
buried here with his wife, who was that Lady Mary 
Howard whose evidence at the trial of her brother so 
largely contributed to his condemnation. But it is the 
tomb of Surrey which among all these massive monu- 
ments awakens the saddest thoughts ; for by the untimely 
death of that unhappy nobleman England was robbed 
of a poet of whom it has been said that his genius had 
been surpassed in his own country only by that of 
Chaucer. He has been described as " a brilliant li^ht 
in a dark age," and even the most discriminating of his 
critics have admitted that in his works there is such 
splendid promise that had he lived longer he might 
have made for himself a place among our greatest 
poets. 

At the beginning of this chapter, writing from the 
point of view of an occasional visitor, I have referred to 
the apparent listlessness of life in Framlingham ; but I 
would not have it thought that in mentioning this I am 
suggesting something derogatory to the quaint old 
town, the " restfulness " of which is one of its chief 

F 



66 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

charms. One needs to live in such a town to be able to 
write of it from any point of view but that of an " out- 
sider," and it is only fair to the inhabitants of Fram- 
lingham to bear in mind that the late John Cordy 
Jeaffreson — who was a native of Framlingham, spent 
the early years of his life here, and was intimately 
associated with the town so long as he lived — was by 
no means disposed to consider it a " sleepy " place. 

"So much," he writes, "is said now-a-days by 
novelists of the dullness and torpor of small country- 
towns, that I shall probably surprise some readers . . . 
by speaking of Framlingham, i.e. the Framlingham of 
my youth and early manhood, as more remarkable for 
gaiety than sleepiness. Lying twenty miles away from 
the nearest railway-station and five miles from a turn- 
pike road, it was an out-of-the-way and secluded place, 
and very tranquil in comparison with the larger villages 
of the main highways. . . . But, though it was secluded 
and tranquil, Framlingham was far from a sleepy and 
sluggish place. Life went on pleasantly, and sometimes 
even briskly in and about the picturesque town. As 
one of a large family, with six elder sisters, and some 
of them marvellously clever sisters, overflowing with 
droll gossip, and quick at repartee, I was never in want 
of bright companions when I had done my work in the 
surgery. The town had no collection of books to be 
spoken of seriously as a good library, but every house 
of the upper ten families had so goodly a lot of books, 
to which we all had access, that I and my sisters were 
nearly as well provided with standard literature as we 
should have been, had my father possessed the finest 
library of the county. The best of the new literature 
came to us through one of the old-fashioned club- 
libraries, far more promptly than books ' in great 
demand ' come to country-towns now-a-days from the 
monstrous circulating libraries of recent invention. The 



IN AND ABOUT FRAMLINGHAM G7 

best novels, the best biographies, the best books of 
travel, we got them all whilst they were still new 
literature. Thanks to a spirited little bookseller . . . 
Dickens's green leaves dropt into our hands wet from 
the press." 

In the early chapters of his ** Book of Recollections," 
Cordy Jeaffreson gossips very entertainingly about life 
in the Woodland district around Framlingham in the 
middle of the last century. His father was a well- 
known surgeon, who would probably have made a big 
reputation had he chosen to practise in London, instead 
of in a remote little country town ; and it was Dr. 
Jeafifreson's hope that his son would become his partner 
and succeed him in the practice ; but Cordy Jeaffreson 
had other views, which led to his becoming the author 
of "A Book about the Clergy," "A Book about 
Doctors," and a novelist of some repute. He was an 
intimate friend of Thackeray, of whom he has left us 
some interesting reminiscences ; and he also had the 
questionable advantage of the acquaintance of Mr. 
Andrew Arcedeckne, the original of the Mr. Foker in 
" Pendennis." Andrew Arcedeckne, who was descended 
from a barrister who became attorney-general of Jamaica, 
had his home at Glevering Hall, in the parish of 
Hacheston, a few miles south-east of Framlingham ; 
but he was too poor to " keep up " the hall, so usually 
lived at some inn in the neighbourhood. He is 
described by Jeaffreson as having been — 

"a smart slangy, ludicrous person — an extravagant 
caricature of Albert Smith's • gent,' in respect to his 
manners and speech — he was assiduous in his attentions 
to those actors and actresses of whom he was a sort of 



68 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

patron. Hanging about the theatres, he aimed at 
distinguishing himself as an amateur actor in low 
comedy. ... At the White Horse, of Ipswich, or the 
Bull, of Woodbridge, where, for a few pounds a week he 
was lord of the host, and enjoyed the idolatry of the 
boots and barmaid, Mr. Arcedeckne made himself at 
home for days and even weeks at a time, revelling in 
the homage rendered him night after night by the 
tradesmen of the town and the commercial travellers, 
to whom he sung his comic songs or performed his 
comic parts. The gentleman's language, style, humour 
were inexpressibly absurd." 

Jeafifreson admits that Thackeray was wrong in 
introducing this eccentric person into " Pendennis " as a 
typical young Englishman ; but denies that he either 
caricatured or maligned him. 

" Minimizing his vulgarity, he toned down his more 
offensive characteristics and emphasized his genial 
qualities, so that the Foker of the novel became a far 
more agreeable fellow than the Arcedeckne of re A life." 

And "though he (Arcedeckne) affected to regard the 
too personal portrait as an impertinence that justified 
him in speaking of the great novelist as a tuft-hunter 
and snob, and in addressing him saucily as ' Thack,' " 
Jeaffreson "cannot imagine that he was at any time 
acutely pained by it" 



CHAPTER V 
WITH CRABBE AT PARHAM 

The Old Hall — Farmer Tovell — A yeoman's home a century 
ago — Little Glemham Hall — Crabbe and Fox — Crabbe's life at 
Glemham — Crabbe as a preacher — " The Parish Register " — 
" Sir Eustace Grey " — Crabbe and opium — " Morbid inspiration " 
— The last years in Suffolk — Rendham. 

IN the neighbourhood of Framlingham we take up 
again the tale of the poet Crabbe's associations 
with his native county ; for it was at Parham, a charming 
little village only a mile or two along the Wickham 
Market road, that Crabbe was so frequently a guest of 
that sturdy yeoman farmer, John Tovell, whose niece, 
Sarah Elmy, became the poet's wife. But Parham, 
although in the centre of a district famous for its old 
moated halls and farmhouses, and still possessing in its 
Moat Hall, the old home of the Willoughbys, one of the 
most picturesque houses of its kind in Suffolk, has 
unfortunately lost its " Old Hall," except in so far as a 
few portions of it may be embodied in the house now 
occupying its site. This house stands on some rather 
high ground to the right of the road leading from Parham 
to the village of Hacheston, but in outward appearance 
there is nothing about it to suggest the curious old-world 
life that the inmates of the Old Hall lived in the days 

69 



70 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

when the impecunious young apothecary, who was after- 
wards to distinguish himself in the literary world, used 
to come over from Woodbridge or Aldeburgh to stroll 
with his sweetheart along the quiet Parham lanes. In 
those days Farmer Tovell rather despised the bookish 
youth, whose ignorance of farm matters seemed to him 
as culpable as his ignorance of seamanship had appeared 
to his father; and in his hearing, when his "book- 
learning " was discussed, he would often ask what good 
the " d d learning " could ever be to him ; but after- 
wards, when the erstwhile apothecary and dock-labourer 
had become a successful poet and the rector of Muston, 
he had a very different reception when he came to stay 
for a while beneath the blunt old yeoman's roof. This 
we can gather from the Rev. George Crabbe's biography 
of his father, in which he has given us what is perhaps 
the best description extant of life in a yeoman farmer's 
home a century ago. 

" On the third day we reached Parham," writes the 
Rev. George Crabbe, " and I was introduced to a set of 
manners and customs, of which there remains, perhaps, 
no counterpart in the present day. My great-uncle's 
establishment was that of a first-rate yeoman of that 
period — the Yeoman that had already began to be styled 
by courtesy an Esquire. Mr. Tovell might possess an 
estate of some eight hundred pounds per annum, a 
portion of which he himself cultivated. Educated at a 
mercantile school, he often said of himself, 'Jack will 
never make a gentleman ' ; yet he had a native dignity of 
mind and of manners which might have enabled him to 
pass muster in that character with any but very fastidious 
critics. His house was large, and the surrounding moat, 
the rookery, the ancient dove-cot, and the well-stored 
fishponds, were such as might have suited a gentleman's 



WITH CRABBE AT PARHAM 71 

seat of some consequence ; but one side of the house 
immediately overlooked a farmyard, full of all sorts of 
domestic animals, and the scene of constant bustle and 
noise. On entering the house, there was nothing at first 
sight to remind one of the farm — a spacious hall, paved 
with black and white marble ; at one extremity a very 
handsome drawing-room, and at the other a fine old 
staircase of black oak, polished till it was as slippery as 
ice, and having a chime-clock and a barrel-organ on its 
landing-places. But this drawing-room, a corresponding 
dining-parlour, and a handsome sleeping apartment 
upstairs, were all tabooed ground, and made use of on 
great and solemn occasions only — such as rent-days, and 
an occasional visit with which Mr. Tovell was honoured 
by a neighbouring peer. At all other times the family 
and their visitors lived entirely in the old-fashioned 
kitchen along with the servants. My great-uncle occupied 
an armchair, or, in attacks of gout, a couch on the side 
of a large open chimney. Mrs. Tovell sat at a small 
table, on which, in the evening, stood one small candle, 
in an iron candle stick, plying her needle by the feeble 
glimmer, surrounded by her maids, all busy at the same 
employment ; but in winter a noble block of wood, 
sometimes the whole circumference of a pollard, threw 
its comfortable warmth and cheerful blaze over the 
apartment. 

"At a very early hour in the morning, the alarum 
called the maids and their mistress also ; and if the 
former were tardy, a louder alarum, and more formidable, 
was heard chiding the delay — not that scolding was 
peculiar to any occasion, it regularly ran on through all 
the day, like bells on harness, inspiriting the work, 
whether it were done ill or well. After the important 
business of the dairy, and a hasty breakfast, their 
respective employments were again resumed ; that which 
the mistress took for her especial privilege being the 
scrubbing of the floors of the state apartments. A new 
servant, ignorant of her presumption, was found one 



12 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

morning on her knees, hard at work on the floor of one 
of these preserves, and was thus addressed by her 
mistress : — ' Vou wash such floors as these ? Give me 
the brush this instant, and troop to the scullery and wash 
that, madam ! ... As true as G — d's in heaven, here 
comes Lord Rochford, to call on Mr. Tovell. Here, 
take my mantle (a blue woollen apron), and I'll go to 
the door ! ' 

" If the sacred apartments had not been opened, the 
family dined on this wise : — the heads seated in the 
kitchen at an old table ; the farm-men standing in 
the adjoining scullery, door open ; the female servants 
at a side table, called a bouter ; with the principals, at 
the table, perchance some travelling rat-catcher, or tinker, 
or farrier, or an occasional gardener in his shirt-sleeves, 
his face probably streaming with perspiration. My 
father well describes, in * The Widow's Tale,' my 
mother's situation, when living in her younger days at 
Parham : 

/ But when the men beside their station took, 
The maidens with them, and with these the cook ; 
When one huge wooden bowl before them stood, 
Fill'd with huge balls of farinaceous food ; 
With bacon, mass saline ! where never lean 
Beneath the brown and bristly rind was seen : 
When from a single horn the party drew 
Their copious draughts of heavy ale and new ; 
When the coarse cloth she saw, with many a stain, 
Soil'd by rude hinds who cut and came again ; 
She could not breathe, but, with a heavy sigh, 
Rein'd the fair neck, and shut the offended eye, 
She minced the sanguine flesh in frustums fine, 
And wondered much to see the creatures dine.' 

" On ordinary days, when the dinner was over, the fire 
replenished, the kitchen sanded and lightly swept over 
in waves, mistress and maids, taking off their shoes, 
retired to their chambers for a nap of one hour to the 



WITH CRABBE AT PARHAM Td 

minute. The dogs and cats commenced their siesta by 
the fire. Mr. Tovell dozed in his chair, and no noise 
was heard, except the melancholy and monotonous 
cooing of a turtle-dove, varied, however, by the shrill 
treble of a canary. After the hour had expired, the 
active part of the family were on the alert, the bottles 
(Mr. Tovell's tea-equipage) placed on the table ; and as 
if by instinct some old acquaintance would glide in for 
the evening's carousal, and then another, and another. 
If four or five arrived, the punchbowl was taken down, 
and emptied and filled again. But whoever came, it 
was comparatively a dull evening unless two especial 
Knights Companions were of the party : — one was a jolly 
old farmer, with much of the person and humour of 
Falstafif, a face as rosy as brandy could make it, and an 
eye teeming with subdued merriment ; for he had the 
prime quality of a joker, superficial gravity : — the other 
was a relative of the family, a wealthy yeoman, middle- 
aged, thin, and muscular. . . . Such was the strength of 
his constitution, that, though he seldom went to bed 
sober, he retained a clear eye and stentorian voice to his 
eightieth year, and coursed when he was ninety. He 
sometimes rendered the colloquies over the bowl pecu- 
liarly piquant ; and so soon as his voice began to be 
elevated, one or two of the inmates, my father and 
mother for example, withdrew with Mrs. Tovell into her 
own sanctum sauctoncm." 

It was with these primitive folk that the author of 
'* The Village " spent many weeks in the intervals of his 
duties at Muston ; but at the time when he came to 
settle down at Parham John Tovell had seen his last 
sheaf harvested, and had himself been cut down by that 
tireless reaper whose scythe is ever swinging. He had 
appointed Crabbe one of his executors ; and on arriving 
at the Old Hall the unfortunate poet found himself in a 
household so distracted by contention that it was only 



74 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

with difficulty he could persuade the contending parties 
to "keep the peace." An ancient maiden lady, a sister 
of the deceased Mr. Tovell, used to boast that she could 
" screw Crabbe up and down like a fiddle " ; but there 
was a point above which he refused to be "screwed," 
and she seems to have learnt in time to respect him. 
This, however, was not the case with the local topers 
who had been accustomed to resort so regularly to the 
Old Hall : they now found only a cool welcome, and 
soon began to say among themselves that " Parham had 
passed away, and the glory thereof." Indeed, during 
the four years that Crabbe lived at the Old Hall he saw 
little of the social side of life, and there was only one 
house in the neighbourhood at which he was a frequent 
visitor. This was Little Glemham Hall, the seat of 
Mr. Dudley North, who years before had granted Crabbe 
the loan of the five pounds he had asked for when he 
determined to leave Aldeburgh and try his fortune in 
London. At Dudley North's house he met such men as 
Earl Grey, Earl Lauderdale, Fox, and Roger Wilbraham ; 
and it was there that Fox, when there was some hesita- 
tion as to who should pass first from the saloon to the 
dining-room, playfully pushed the poet in first, saying, 
" If he had his deserts, he would have walked before us 
all." And it was on the same occasion that Fox, after 
expressing disappointment that Crabbe's pen had been 
so long unemployed, promised to revise any poem he 
might prepare for publication — a promise the poet 
remembered when he had completed his " Parish 
Register." 

About twelve months after his arrival at Parham, 
Crabbe was appointed curate of the neighbouring parish 



WITH CRABBE AT PARHAM 75 

of Sweffling, to which the curacy of Great Glemhatn was 
shortly afterwards added ; but he continued to live at 
the Old Hall until the death of his third son so preyed 
on the health of Mrs. Crabbe that her husband became 
anxious to remove her from a place which now had for 
them both such sad associations. This he was enabled 
to do through the kindness of his good friend and patron 
Dudley North, who offered him Great Glemham Hall at 
a much reduced rent. Into this fine old house — which 
was pulled down in the early part of the last century — 
the Crabbes removed in October, 1796, and it continued 
to be their home for the next five years. 

"The summer evenings especially, at this place," 
writes the Rev. G. Crabbe, the poet's son, " dwell in my 
memory like a delightful dream. When we had finished 
our lessons, if we did not adjourn with my father to the 
garden to work in our own plats, we generally took a 
family walk through the green lanes around Glemham ; 
where, at every turn, stands a cottage or a farm, and not 
collected into a street, as in some parts of the kingdom, 
leaving the land naked and forlorn. Along these we 
wandered sometimes till the moon had risen, my mother 
leading a favourite little niece who lived with us, my 
father reading some novel aloud, while my brother and 
I caught moths and other insects to add to his collection. 
. . . When it was too dark to see, he would take a battle- 
dore and join us in the pursuit of the moths, or carry 
his little favourite if she were tired, and so we proceeded 
homeward, while on the right and left, before and behind, 
the nightingales (I never heard so many as among those 
woods) were pouring out their melody, sometimes three 
or four at once. And now we fill the margin of our 
hats with glowworms to place upon the lawn before 
our windows, and reach the house only in time for 
supper." 



76 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

Crabbe, we are told, was a popular preacher while in 
Suffolk ; and although it was his habit to read too 
quickly while at the desk, this was considered an error 
on the right side, for, as his son characteristically 
remarks, " The extremely slow enunciation of matter so 
very familiar is enough to make piety itself impatient." 
Some of his ways were rather strange, and he had no 
hesitation in addressing his congregation rather bluntly. 
On tithe-day he would say, as he stepped down from 
the pulpit, " I must have some money, gentlemen " ; and 
on one or two occasions, when it grew dark before he 
had finished his sermon, he abruptly closed the manu- 
script with the remark, " Upon my word I cannot see ; I 
must give you the rest when we meet again." Or, if 
determined to complete his discourse, he would walk 
into a pew near a window, stand on a seat, and finish 
reading the sermon there, "with the most admirable 
indifference to the remarks of his congregation." 

During his residence at Great Glemham he com- 
menced and completed several poems ; but most of 
these, together with a treatise on botany and three 
novels at which he tried his hand, he burnt in manu- 
script. He began, however, "The Parish Register," 
which was published with some shorter pieces in 1807. 
But all this time, although well occupied in attending to 
the spiritual needs of his parishioners at Sweffling and 
Great Glemham, Crabbe was the non-resident incumbent 
of Muston, in Leicestershire, and Allington, in Lincoln- 
shire ; and after he had spent about five years at Great 
Glemham, Dr. Pretyman-Tomline, the Bishop of Lincoln, 
notwithstanding the pleading of Mr. Dudley North, de- 
cided that the " absentee " must return to the parishes 



WITH CRABBE AT PARHAM 77 

which had the prior claim to him. He was granted, 
however, a further four years' leave of absence, and in the 
autumn of 1801, when Great Glemham Hall was sold, 
he and his family went to reside at Rendham, a village 
about five miles from Framlingham. There he nearly 
completed " The Parish Register " and set to work upon 
" The Borough " ; while he also wrote, during a visit to 
Muston, a poem of a very different kind to anything he 
had previously produced, i.e. " Sir Eustace Grey." This 
poem has unusual interest for admirers of Crabbe, seeing 
that, as the late Canon Ainger has pointed out, there is 
much in it which was evidently inspired by the dreams 
the writer had experienced in consequence of his having 
become addicted to the opium habit. It should be 
understood, however, that it was by the advice of a 
competent physician that Crabbe took the opiate, and 
it must not be imagined that he ever indulged in the 
habit to the extent Coleridge and De Quincey did. 
He seems to have always had the necessary strength of 
mind to refrain from excessive indulgence ; though, as 
Edward FitzGerald remarks, in a manuscript note in 
his copy of the " Life of Crabbe," " It (the opium) pro- 
bably influenced his dreams, for better or worse." 

That Crabbe's imagination was influenced by his 
opium dreams was suggested to FitzGerald by a 
study of "Sir Eustace Grey" and "The World of 
Dreams." In the former poem, the scene of which 
is laid in a madhouse, Sir Eustace, in describing his 
imagined experiences after madness had come upon 
him, relates how " two fiends of darkness " took charge 
of him : 



78 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

" At length a moment's sleep stole on, — 

Again came my commission'd foes ; 
Again through sea and land we're gone, 

No peace, no respite, no repose : 
Above the dark broad sea we rose, 

We ran through bleak and frozen land ; 
I had no strength their strength t' oppose, 

An infant in a giant's hand. 

" They placed me where those streamers play, 

Those nimble beams of brilliant light ; 
It would the stoutest heart dismay, 

To see, to feel, that dreadful sight : 
So swift, so pure, so cold, so bright, 

They pierced my frame with icy wound ; 
And all that half-year's polar night, 

Those dancing streamers wrapp'd me round. 

" Slowly that darkness pass'd away, 

When down upon the earth I fell, — 
Some hurried sleep was mine by day ; 

But, soon as toll'd the evening bell, 
They forced me on, where ever dwell 

Far distant men in cities fair. 
Cities of whom no travellers tell, 

Nor feet but mine were wanderers there. 

" Their watchmen stare, and stand aghast, 

As on we hurry through the dark ; 
The watch-light blinks as we go past. 

The watch-dog shrinks and fears to bark ; 
The watch-tower's bell sounds shrill ; and, hark ! 

The free wind blows — we've left the town — 
A wide sepulchral ground I mark, 

And on a tombstone place me down." 

In these, and several other verses of " Sir Eustace 
Grey," it is hard to recognize the hand which wrote 
" The Library " and " The Village " ; and when we turn 
to " The World of Dreams " we are confronted by sprites 



WITH CRABBE AT PARHAM 79 

and spectres such as have no place in the " mean streets " 
of " The Borough " or in the pages of " The Parish 
Register " : 

" I know not how, but I am brought 

Into a large and Gothic hall, 
Seated with those I never sought — 

Kings, Cahphs, Kaisers, — silent all ; 
Pale as the dead ; enrobed and tall, 

Majestic, frozen, solemn, still ; 
They wake my fears, my wits appal, 

And with both scorn and terror fill. 

" They're gone ! — and in their room I see 

A fairy being, form and dress 
Brilliant as light ; nor can there be 

On earth that heavenly loveliness ; 
Nor words can that sweet look express, 

Or tell what living gems adorn 
That wondrous beauty : who can guess 

Where such celestial charms were born ? 

" Yet, as I wonder and admire, 

The grace is gone, the glory dead ; 
And now it is but mean attire 

Upon a shrivel'd beldame spread." 

Comparing " Sir Eustace Grey " with the work of De 
Quincey, Canon Ainger remarks that "The morbid 
inspiration is clearly the same in both cases, and there 
can be little doubt that Crabbe's poem owes its inception 
to opium, and that the framework was devised by him 
for the utilization of his dreams." 

The last four years of Crabbe's life in Suffolk were 
spent very quietly. The greater part of the time he was 
at Rendham ; but occasionally he visited Muston and 
Aldeburgh. He returned to his charge at the former 
place in October, 1805, and only once again did he 



80 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

re-visit these Suffolk scenes amid which the happiest 
years of his life were passed. This was shortly after 
the death of his wife, and when he was slowly recover- 
ing from a severe illness which it was feared would 
prove fatal. He then, while recruiting his health at 
Aldeburgh, devoted one day to a solitary ramble around 
Parham and through the Glemham woods, where he was 
everywhere reminded of those long-gone days when he 
had often trudged over to Parham to exchange vows of 
undying affection with his " Mira." On this occasion it 
was night before he returned to Aldeburgh ; and after 
his death his son found in his note-book the following 
lines, which he had apparently composed during that 
solitary walk : 

" Yes, I behold again the place, 

The seat of joy, the source of pain ; 
It brings in view the form, the face 
That I must never see again. 

" The night-bird's song that sweetly floats 
On this soft gloom — this balmy air. 
Brings to the mind her sweeter notes 
That I again must never hear. 

" Lo ! yonder shines that window's light, 
My guide, my token, heretofore ; 
And now again it shines as bright, 
When those dear eyes can shine no more. 

" Then hurry from this place away ! 
It gives not now the bliss it gave ; 
For Death has made its charm his prey, 
And joy is buried in her grave." 



CHAPTER VI 
EAST DEREHAM 

George Sorrow's birthplace — Sorrow's opinion of Dereham — 
Dumpling Green — The Perfrements — Ann Perfrement — The Wake 
of Freya — Sergeant- Major Borrow — Marries Ann Perfrement — 
Birth of George Borrow — Lady Eleanor Fenn — James Philo — 
Cowper — His life at Dereham— At Mundesley — Dr. Johnson — 
Dunham Lodge — Miss Perowne — Death of Mrs. Unwin — "The 
Castaway" — Death of Cowper — His tomb in Dereham Church — 
Mrs. Browning's tribute to Cowper — Mattishall — William Bodham 
Donne— FitzGerald at Mattishall — " The Paston Letters" — Horace 
Walpole's opinion of them — Sir John Fenn. 

" /^~\^ an evening of July, in the year i8 — , at East 

v_y D , a beautiful little town in a certain 

district of East Anglia, I first saw the light." 

With these words, George Borrow, who was always 
averse to stating his age, and generally gave it incorrectly, 
opened the first chapter of his " Lavengro," written when 
East Dereham had become only a memory to him, and 
he was settled down in his lonely little house beside 
Oulton Broad. East Dereham is, indeed, a pleasant 
place, and it is pardonable if Borrow, looking back at 
it through the golden haze which often softens the hard 
outlines of half- forgotten scenes, considered it " beautiful," 
though a stranger is hardly so impressed by its beauty 
as by the quiet of its streets and the peaceful charm of 
G 8i 



82 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

its surroundings. But just as most of us who have been 
born amid country scenes can usually find more in them 
than others can, so Borrow, after wandering among 
ancient towns and cities, and through some of the 
wildest and most impressive scenery of Europe, thought 
of the apple and cherry blossom in the Dereham orchards 
and the mayblossom of the high hedges bordering the 
Dereham lanes, and called the town " beautiful." And 
one is not inclined to quarrel with him about it, especially 
on a bright May day, when the sunlight falls warmly on 
what are left of the old red roofs of Dereham, cuckoo- 
flowers are waving their lilac blossoms in the meadows 
beside "the brook Tud," and thrushes are singing in 
almost every garden in and around the town. One is 
rather disposed to be as favourably impressed with the 
place as those early pilgrims must have been when, after 
long and toilsome journeying, they came here to kneel 
before St. Withburga's shrine. But apart from its 
church and what are (very improbably) said to be the 
remains of the tomb of St. Withburga, there is as little 
in Dereham for those that " love everything that's old " 
to be attracted by as there is of that which is strikingly 
beautiful to captivate the simple seeker after what is 
lovely and picturesque. It is for its associations rather 
than anything else that it is interesting ; little else, I 
feel convinced, would tempt a stranger to loiter in 
Dereham or seek an intimate acquaintance with a 
locality bearing the euphonious name of Dumpling 
Green. Yet, to Dumpling Green we must go to find 
the house in which Borrow — no matter how much he 
might try to conceal the fact — was born in the year 1803. 
To reach the so-called Green, after arriving at the 



EAST DEREHAM 83 

railway station, one must turn down the narrow Com- 
mercial Road, which branches off on the left from the 
Station Road, and follow it, after it has become the 
Yaxham Road, until there is seen on the right a small 
thatched alehouse called the Jolly Farmers. Im- 
mediately opposite this alehouse is a lane running at 
right angles with the road, and this is Dumpling Green ; 
though to-day it bears no resemblance to the open 
greens on which our villagers were wont to disport 
themselves during rustic festivals in the days when 
England was " merrie England." It is, in fact, a narrow 
lane, bordered for the most part by high hedges of 
hawthorn, wild rose, and bramble, but with here and 
there an ancient cottage or small farmhouse with orchard 
and garden, giving some relief to the sameness of its 
midday twilight of shade. Nearly half a mile down 
this lane there is, on the right, a pond, or, as it is locally 
called, a " pit," quite big enough for a child in quest of 
tadpoles to tumble into ; and just beyond it, on the 
opposite side of the lane, is the house in which, on 
the evening of July 5th, 1803, George Henry Borrow 
first made the acquaintance of a world which, notwith- 
standing the considerable experience he had of it, seems 
never to have been quite good enough for him, though 
he often had a good word to say for parts of it. 

It is a small plain-fronted, two-storied house with 
attics, of substantial appearance, built of red brick, but 
showing signs of having at some time received one or 
more coatings of white or drab paint or wash. The 
front door is approached through a tiny garden con- 
taining a few straggling rose-bushes, and opens into a 
little entrance hall or lobby, from which the main 



84 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

staircase ascends opposite the door, under a kind of 
arch, on each side of which is a curious little sliding 
door or ventilator. The rooms on either side of the 
entrance are of fair size and quite uninteresting, but 
the kitchen, which is reached by a passage, has a wide, 
open, old-fashioned hearth, beside which Borrow, as a 
babe, must often have lain on his mother's knees. At the 
back of the house are the usual farm outbuildings. On 
the right is an orchard, from which most of the trees are 
gone ; and behind it and the farm buildings are meadows 
and fields. So far as can be judged from their appear- 
ance, neither the house nor the country surrounding it 
has undergone any alteration since Farmer Samuel 
Perfrement entered into occupation of the farm over a 
century ago. 

The Perfrements, as Borrow tells us, and their name 
implies, were of French Protestant descent, the grand- 
father of Samuel having migrated from France soon 
after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. He was 
probably one of the less-well-to-do emigrants from that 
country ; for there is no record of his ever having 
become a landowner, nor of his son or grandson ever 
having been proprietor of a farm, Samuel Perfrement 
probably married a daughter of some other farmer in 
the neighbourhood in which he settled, and by her he 
had eight children, his third child and second daughter 
being Ann, who was born in January, 1772, and became 
the wife of Captain Thomas Borrow, Of the childhood 
of Ann we know little, but the little we know is interest- 
ing because it helps us to realize the atmosphere of 
superstition in which the less educated country folk 
lived at the end of the eighteenth century. Her elder 



EAST DEREHAM 85 

sister Elizabeth, when sixteen years old, practised one 
night an ancient superstitious ceremony of Norse 
origin known as the " Wake of Freya," the belief being 
that if a young maiden should wash her linen white in 
running water and watch it drying before the fire from 
eleven till twelve at night, the goddess Freya would, on 
the stroke of midnight, show her the face of the man 
she would marry. Elizabeth, it seems, although so 
young, had had the misfortune to be jilted by a pro- 
fessed lover, and, being much afraid that she would 
never win a husband, she determined to set her mind at 
rest one way or another by performing the mystic rite. 
Accordingly, on a bitter cold night, she hung before the 
fire a garment she had washed in a pool beneath an old 
oak near the house — the pool and oak can still be seen 
— and having set the door open, as the rite required, sat 
with her sister Ann, shivering with cold and fright, 
waiting for " something to happen." At last the hour 
of midnight struck, and before the third stroke had 
sounded the quaking sisters heard the garden gate 
slam. " Before I could recover myself," stated Mrs. 
Borrow, several years afterwards, " my sister had sprung 
to the door and both locked and bolted it. The next 
moment she was in convulsions. I scarcely know what 
happened ; and yet it appeared to me for a moment 
that something pressed against the door with a low 
moaning sound." The result of it all was, to quote 
again her own words : " Why, my sister was ill for many 
weeks. Poor thing, she never throve, married poorly, 
flung herself away." 

With Ann the fates dealt more kindly. When she 
was twenty years of age she was permitted to play a 



86 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

minor part in her native town with a company of actors 
sent on tour by the Norwich Theatre, and among those 
who witnessed her small performance on the Dereham 
stage was Sergeant-Major Borrow of the West Norfolk 
Militia, which had its headquarters in the town. This 
Thomas Borrow was a Cornishman by birth, who, after 
serving in the Cornish Yeomanry Militia, had enlisted 
into the Coldstream Guards, worked his way up from 
private to Sergeant, and, in 1792, had been appointed 
drill-instructor and recruiting officer of the local militia. 
On being attracted by the charms of the fair Ann 
Perfrement, he took the first opportunity to make her 
acquaintance ; and, believing perhaps that there was 
truth in the local saying, " Happy the wooing that's not 
long a-doing," he married her in February, 1793, rather 
less than a year after his first appearance in Dereham. 
The marriage took place at the parish church, the 
witnesses who signed the register being the bride's 
superstitious sister Elizabeth and the parish clerk. Two 
years after his marriage, Thomas Borrow was appointed 
quarter-master of the West Norfolk Militia, and three 
years later he was promoted to the adjutancy of the 
same regiment, a promotion carrying with it captain's 
rank. 

For about ten years subsequent to his marriage 
Captain Borrow was moving from place to place with 
his regiment, and during that time a son, John, was 
born to him, probably at Chelmsford or Colchester. 
But in 1802 the W. N. M. returned to Dereham, and 
were dispersed for a while, to be re-embodied in the 
following year, during which the Captain's second son, 
George, was born, and within a month of his birth 



EAST DEREHAM 87 

commenced his travels with the regiment. Six years 
later the Borrows were here again, and also during 
portions of the two ensuing years ; and it was then 
that young George received such impressions of his 
native town as he has given us in " Lavengro." 

" I have already said," he writes, " that it was a 
beautiful little town — at least it was at the time of 
which I am speaking ; what it is at present I know not, 
for thirty years or more have elapsed since I last trod 
its streets. It will scarcely have improved, for how 
could it be better than it then was ? I love to think 

on thee, pretty, quiet D , thou pattern of an old 

English country town, with thy clean but narrow streets 
branching out from thy modest market-place, with 
thine old-fashioned houses, with here and there a roof 
of venerable thatch, with thy one half-aristocratic 
mansion, where resided thy Lady Bountiful — she, the 
generous and kind, who loved to visit the sick, leaning 
on her gold-headed cane, whilst the sleek footman 
walked at a respectful distance behind." 

And further on in the same chapter he tells us that — 

" Twice every Sunday I was regularly taken to the 
church, where, from a corner of the spacious pew, lined 
with black leather, I would fix my eyes on the dignified 
high-church rector, and the dignified high-church clerk, 
and watch the movement of their lips, from which, as 
they read their respective portions of the venerable 
liturgy, would roll many a portentous word descriptive 
of the wondrous works of the Most High." 

Borrow's " Lady Bountiful " has been identified with 
Lady Eleanor Fenn, the wife of Sir John Fenn, who 
was the first editor of the famous " Paston Letters." For 
nearly fifty years Lady Fenn lived in Dereham, where 



88 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

she founded a Sunday school and, as Dr. Knapp tells 
us, "wrote comfortable volumes for the young under 
the nonis de plume of Mrs. Teachwell and Mrs. Love- 
child." As for the "dignified high-church rector," he 
was the Rev. Charles Hyde Wollaston ; while the clerk 
whom Borrow has immortalised was James Philo or 
Philoh, an old soldier whose grave may be seen in the 
churchyard. 

" I have heard say that he blew a fife ... a bold 
fife, to cheer the Guards and the brave Marines as 
they marched with measured step, obeying an insane 
command, up Bunker's height, whilst the rifles of the 
sturdy Yankees were sending the leaden hail sharp and 
thick amidst the red-coated ranks ; for Philoh had not 
always been a man of peace, nor an exhorter to turn 
the other cheek to the smiter, but had even arrived at 
the dignity of a halberd in his country's service before 
his six-foot form required rest, and the gray-haired 
veteran retired, after a long peregrination, to his native 
town." 

Apart from his recollections of this ancient worthy, 
his rector, and the Lady Bountiful, Borrow has left us 
no reminiscences of his childhood in Dereham, save 
that in 1811 he stood one evening in the market-place 
and gazed at a comet which "had a tail like that of 
a kite." 

So, as we shall meet with George Borrow amid 
other scenes, we turn towards the fine old church to 
which he was taken as a child, and, after glancing at 
its massive detached bell-tower, which was used as a 
prison for French prisoners of war on their way from 
Yarmouth to Norman Cross ; at the grave of the young 
Frenchman, Jean de Narde, who was shot whilst 




A 



EAST DEREHAM 89 

attempting to escape from the tower ; and at the 
supposed relics of the tomb of St. Withburga ; pass 
through the porch and into the north transept, where 
lie the mortal remains of him whom Borrow calls 
" England's best and sweetest bard." 

The story of Cowper's connection with Dereham 
is far from being cheerful reading ; for ere he came 
here the dark cloud of despair had overshadowed him, 
and during the few years that elapsed between his 
arrival here and his death there were very few days 
when his unhinged mind permitted him to find any 
pleasure in life. It was in July, 1795, about a year 
after the King had allowed him a pension for life, that, 
accompanied by his invalid friend, Mrs. Unwin, he was 
removed from Weston to North Tuddenham, near 
Dereham, where the rectory was prepared for his 
accommodation until his friends were able to remove 
him to Mundesley, on the Norfolk coast. When the 
idea of his removal was first mooted, Lady Hesketh 
said that he loved Norfolk, and ardently wished to see 
it again before he died ; but that he started for North 
Tuddenham in a most despondent mood, and with a 
presentiment that he would never see Weston again, is 
evident from his having written on a shutter of his 
Weston bedroom — 

" Farewell, dear scenes, for ever closed to me ; 
Oh ! for what sorrows must I now exchange ye ! " 

At Mundesley he occupied a house from the windows 
of which he could look out on the sea, and every effort 
was made to prevent his brooding over his troubles ; 
but he had not been there many days when he wrote to 



90 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

Lady Hesketh that he was as " hopeless as ever " ; that, 
" the most forlorn of beings," he trod the shore " under 
the burden of infinite despair." He compared himself 
with a solitary pillar of rock which the crumbling cliff 
had left at the high-water mark. "Torn from my 
natural connections, I stand alone and expect the storm 
that shall displace me." One day his relative, the 
Rev. Dr. Johnson, persuaded him to walk to Happis- 
burgh and back after dinner, a distance of about 
fourteen miles. 

" Poor Soul," wrote Dr. Johnson, a day or two later, 
" he said he never walked so far in his life but once — 
and besides he carried an umbrella to keep the wind 
from his eyes, which laid full in our faces, and made it 
quite hard work for him to get along with his sail 
spread." 

He himself said that he was " almost ready to sink 
with fatigue long before we reached the place of our 
destination," and added that the walk had brought on 
a fever he would perhaps never get rid of. Writing 
again in the following month, he expressed his con- 
viction that he would never see Weston again. 

" I have been tossed like a ball into a far country, 
from which there is no rebound for me. There indeed 
I lived a life of infinite despair, and such is my life in 
Norfolk. Such indeed it would be in any given spot 
upon the face of the globe." 

In the autumn of the same year Cowper was brought 
to Dereham, where Dr. Johnson had a house in the 
market-place. But before the end of the year another 
move was made to Dunham Lodge, a house standing 



EAST DEREHAM 91 

in a pleasant park about nine miles from Dereham. 
Here, says Taylor, one of his biographers, Cowper and 
Mrs. Unwin were constantly attended by — 

"two of the most interesting females that could possibly 
have been selected, Miss Johnson and Miss Perowne. 
The latter took so lively an interest in Cowper's welfare, 
and exerted so much ingenuity in attempting to produce 
some alleviation of his sufferings, that he ever after- 
wards honoured her with his peculiar regard, and pre- 
ferred her attendance to that of every other individual 
by whom he was surrounded ; and she continued her 
kind attention to him to the close of his life." 

Cowper's depression, however, underwent little abate- 
ment, and in June, 1796, Dr. Johnson hit upon a plan 
which for a time caused him to take some interest in 
life and literary matters. There had just been published 
a new edition of Pope's " Homer," and it occurred to 
Dr. Johnson that this work might excite the poet's 
interest sufficiently to rouse him from his dejection. 
He therefore sent for a copy of the book, and placed it 
where Cowper was bound to see it, at the same time 
remarking that it contained some comparisons of Pope 
with Cowper. The plan succeeded so well that next 
day Cowper was discovered not only to have found the 
passages referred to, but to have corrected his own 
translation. He then became regularly engaged in 
revising his own version, and for some weeks produced 
nearly sixty lines a day ; but after a few weeks he 
again lapsed into hopeless depression, and towards the 
end of October, 1796, it was thought desirable to 
remove him to Mundesley and afterwards to Dereham 
for the winter. During that winter his dear friend, 



92 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

Mrs. Unwin, died. For a long time he had been 
accustomed to sit with her for a short time every day, 
and he did so on the day before her death ; but so far 
as his friends could discern he was so absorbed in his 
own mental anguish as to be unconscious of the 
seriousness of her condition. On the following morning, 
however, his first question to the servant who opened 
the shutters of his room was, " Is there life above 
stairs ? " He saw Mrs. Unwin an hour before her 
death, when "one exclamation of passionate sorrow 
escaped him " ; afterwards, he never mentioned her 
name. 

Dr. Johnson's efforts to impart some cheerfulness to 
his despondent kinsman were unceasing, and at times 
he succeeded in getting him to take some interest in 
reading and composing. He never lost an opportunity to 
direct his attention to his " Homer," which he eventually 
completed. While at Dereham he composed a few 
original poems, among them being " Montes Glaciales," 
founded on an incident he had heard read from a 
Norwich paper, but to which at the time he had 
appeared to pay no heed. His last original poem, " The 
Castaway," was founded on an incident related in 
Anson's " Voyage " of a mariner who was washed 
overboard in the Atlantic and drowned. Its two con- 
cluding verses are — 

" I therefore purpose not, or dream, 

Descanting on his fate, 
To give the melancholy theme 

A more enduring date : 
But misery still delights to trace 
Its semblance in another's case. 



EAST DEREHAM 93 

" No voice divine the storm allay'd, 
No light propitious shone, 
When snatch'd from all effectual aid, 

We perish'd, each alone : 
But I beneath a rougher sea, 
And whelm'd by deeper gulfs than he." 

Commenting on this poem, Professor Goldwin Smith 
says that — 

" The despair which finds vent in verse is hardly 
despair. Poetry can never be the direct expression of 
emotion ; it must be the product of reflection combined 
with an exercise of the faculty of composition which in 
itself is pleasant. Still ' The Castaway ' ought to be an 
antidote to religious depression, since it is the work of a 
man of whom it would be an absurdity to think as really 
estranged from the spirit of good, who had himself done 
good to the utmost of his powers," 

But his Dereham days were dreary enough, and 
although Dr. Johnson occasionally took him to 
Mundesley, even the upsetting of the chaise in which 
he made the journey failed to disturb his mental pre- 
occupation ; at any rate, we are told, he " discovered no 
particular alarm." Several works of fiction were read 
to him, in which he took some interest ; and when his 
own works were read to him, they seemed to interest 
him until the reader arrived at " John Gilpin," when he 
begged him to desist. 

The final break-up of his health began towards the 
close of 1799; but he lingered on until the 25th April 
of the following year. On the night before his death 
some refreshment was offered to him by his devoted 
attendant. Miss Perowne, but he rejected it with the 
last words he was heard to utter, "What can it signify?" 



94 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

" Peace to the unhappy one, he is gone to his rest," 
wrote Borrow many years after ; " the death-like face 
is no longer occasionally seen timidly and mournfully 
looking for a moment through the window-pane upon 

thy market-place, quiet and pretty D ; the hind in 

thy neighbourhood no longer at evening-fall views, and 
starts as he views, the dark, lathy figure moving beneath 
the hazels and alders of shadowy lanes, or by the side 
of murmuring trout streams; and no longer at early 
dawn does the sexton of the old church reverently doff 
his hat as, supported by some kind friend, the death- 
stricken creature totters along the church path to that 
mouldering edifice with the low roof, inclosing a spring 
of sanatory waters, built and devoted to some saint — if 
the legend over the door be true, by the daughter of an 
East Anglian king." 

He was buried under the north window of the north 
transept of Dereham Church, where his simple monu- 
ment is inscribed with lines by his friend Hayley, which, 
as Professor Goldwin Smith remarks, "if not good 
poetry," are " a tribute of sincere affection." 

" Ye, who in warmth the pubhc triumph feel 
Of talents, dignified by sacred zeal. 
Here to devotion's bard, devoutly just. 
Pay your fond tribute due to Cowper's dust. 
England, exulting in his spotless fame, 
Ranks with her dearest sons his fav'rite name. 
Sense, fancy, wit, suffice not all to raise 
So dear a title to affection's praise. 
His highest honours to the heart belong ; 
His virtues formed the magic of his song." 

The monument, which was erected at the cost of Lady 
Hesketh, also has attached to it tablets to the memory 
of Mrs. Unwin and Miss Perowne, his " best and dearest 



EAST DEREHAM 95 

friends," Above the tomb is a memorial window, in 
one of the central lights of which is a figure of the poet. 
But his own works are his best memorial, and perhaps 
the finest tribute paid to his memory is that of Mrs. 
Browning — 

" O poets, from a maniac's tongue was poured the deathless 

singing ; 
O Christians, at your cross of hope, a hopeless hand was 

clinging ; 
O men, this man in brotherhood your weary paths beguiling. 
Groaned inly while he taught you peace, and died while ye 

were smiling ! 

And now, what time ye all may read through dimming tears his 

story, 
How discord on the music fell, and darkness on the glory. 
And how when, one by one, sweet sounds and wandering lights 

departed, 
He wore no less a loving face because so broken-hearted. 
******* 

" And wrought within his shattered brain such quick poetic senses 
As hills have language for, and stars, harmonious influences. 
The pulse of dew upon the grass, kept his within its number, 
And silent shadows from the trees refreshed him like a slumber." 

The other Dereham memorial of Cowper is a chapel 
adjoining the market-place. In front of it is an inscrip- 
tion by the late Dean Stanley, appended to which 
are some familiar and pathetic lines from " The Task " 
commencing — 

" I was the stricken deer that left the herd." 

With the names of Cowper and Borrow associated 
with it, East Dereham must needs have an interest for 
us there is little in itself to awaken ; but when one has 
seen Borrow's birthplace and stood beside Cowper's 



96 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

tomb, he may wish to see something more of the scenes 
amid which the one spent part of his childhood and the 
other his declining years. So, if he have time to spare, 
he can hardly do better than ramble westward through 
those scenes of " Arcady " which have been so faithfully 
and delightfully described by the Rev. Canon Jessopp ; 
or eastward, to Yaxham, where Cowper's kinsman and 
friend is buried ; and to Mattishall, where Edward Fitz- 
Gerald was sometimes the guest of his friend William 
Bodham Donne. These are quiet places where traditions 
live longer than amid more stirring scenes, and, as they 
have undergone little change within the memory of 
living men, one may perhaps receive impressions among 
them which will help to revive the fading features of 
the past. 

William Bodham Donne, the literary critic and 
Licenser of Plays, was born at Mattishall in 1807. He 
was the friend and frequent correspondent of several 
distinguished men, and in treating of the literary associa- 
tions of Bury St. Edmunds — where he lived for some 
years — I shall have occasion to refer to him at some 
length. On leaving Gonville and Caius College, 
Cambridge, he returned to Mattishall and devoted him- 
self to the study of English literature, and especially of 
the drama, among his own first literary productions 
being a fine essay on Sir Thomas Browne, which 
appeared in the " Athenaeum " in 1829. He did not, how- 
ever, give himself up seriously to literary work until 
after his marriage with a niece of Cowper's kinsman. 
Dr. Johnson. FitzGerald, who had been one of his 
boy-friends at the famous Bury Grammar School, 
visited him at his Mattishall home towards the end of 



EAST DEREHAM 97 

1836, Writing soon after to Richard Trench, after- 
wards Archbishop of Dublin, Donne says — 

" His (FitzGerald's) life and conversation are the 
most perfectly philosophic of any I know. They 
approach in grand quiescence to some of the marvels of 
contentment in Plutarch. He is Diogenes without his 
dirt. He confesses to so much ease, as to make it a 
question whether since he cannot find, he should not 
create for himself some salutary trouble, and consults 
me if he should marry, or open a Banker's Book. I 
advise him, however, to let well alone." 

This was the first of several visits paid by FitzGerald 
to Mattishall, where, as Mrs. Catherine B. Johnson tells 
us, no one " was more welcome . . . and the children 
loved him (the ' Goths and Vandals,' as he called them)." 
On one occasion, when he was speculating about 
settling down in some country-town for the winter, 
Donne recommended Dereham to him — 

" because Dereham contains no one of the elements of 
his comfort and, had he been in earnest, would have 
most speedily put his project to flight. Dereham," adds 
Donne, "is peopled with Capulets and Montagues who 
quarrel on every decent occasion — such as coals, schools, 
gravel-pits, Friendly Societies, Odd Fellows, news- 
papers, churchwardens, etc., and would have managed 
to draw our even-minded friend into some quarrel, or 
would have united, to squabble with him." 

About ten years before the Donnes removed to 
Bury, their Mattishall house was occupied for a while 
by Sir William Parry, the Arctic explorer — " the friend 
and crony of both ' the Bears,' greater and less," Donne 
called him, "the great hyperborean. Knight of the 
North Pole." 

H 



98 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

Before taking final leave of Dereham, there is one 
other house to be glanced at which deserves at least a 
passing mention. It is known as Hill House, and 
stands in the north-east corner of the Market Place, 
at the junction of Theatre Street and Wellington Road. 
About a hundred and twenty years ago there was given 
to the world by John Fenn, an almost unknown Norfolk 
antiquary then living in this old house, a selection from 
a remarkable series of letters. They appeared in two 
volumes under the title of " Original Letters written 
during the Reigns of Henry VL, Edward IV,, and 
Richard III., by Various Persons of Rank and Con- 
sequence," and their appearance excited a great deal of 
interest. In about a week the whole of the first edition 
was disposed of, and for some time little else was talked 
of in the literary world. Horace Walpole, whose 
opinion on such subjects carried more weight than that 
of any of his contemporaries, wrote — 

" The letters of Henry VI.'s reign, etc., are come out, 
and to me make all other letters not worth reading. I 
have gone through one volume, and cannot bear to be 
writing when I am so eager to be reading. . . . There 
are letters from all my acquaintance, Lord Rivers, Lord 
Hastings, the Earl of Warwick, whom I remember still 
better than Mrs. Strawbridge, though she died within 
these fifty years. What antiquary would be answering 
a letter from a living countess, when he may read one 
from Eleanor Mowbray, Duchess of Norfolk ? " 

The two volumes were dedicated to King George 
III., who soon sent for, and was presented with, the 
original letters ; and, in acknowledgment of the gift, 
John Fenn, who had prepared them for publication, was 




!3 •= 

O M 

X - 



EAST DEREHAM 99 

knighted. More letters from the wonderful collection 
were loudly called for, and two years later two further 
volumes were issued, covering the period already dealt 
with in the first volumes and containing further corre- 
spondence dating down to the middle of the reign of 
Edward IV. Subsequently, after the death of Sir John 
Fenn, a fifth volume was issued by his nephew, Mr. 
Serjeant Frere, and the public was in possession of the 
greater part of the famous Paston Letters. Since then 
a new edition, containing upwards of four hundred 
hitherto unpublished letters, has been carefully edited 
by Mr. James Gairdner — an edition which must prove 
to be a lasting monument to its compiler and an 
invaluable possession to future historians and students 
of life in England during the latter part of the period 

of the House of Lancaster and the early years of the 

T- J . , • OFC. 

Tudor period. *-• " 



CHAPTER VII 

NORWICH 

The literary life of Norwich — Its worthies and celebrities — ■ 
William Taylor — Dr. Frank Sayers — The Austins — Joseph John 
Gurney — Elizabeth Fry — Lady Eastlake — Amelia Opie — Becomes 
a Quaker — Her "passion for prisms" — The Stanfield Hall 
murder — Death of Mrs. Opie — Harriet Martineau and Mrs. 
Opie — The Martineaus — Harriet Martineau's " Autobiography " 
— Her childhood — Polidori — William Taylor — George Borrow — 
Borrow's Court, Willow Lane — Borrow at Norwich Grammar 
School — Contemporary scholars — Borrow runs away — Is brought 
back again — A painful sequel — Frances Power Cobbe's and 
Dr. Martineau's recollections of Borrow — Thomas D'Eterville — 
Borrow as a " sportsman " — Borrow and the gipsies — Norwich 
Castle Hill — Jasper Petulengro — Mousehold Heath — The "wind 
on the heath " — Borrow and William Taylor — Borrow's knowledge 
of languages — The " Athens of England " — Borrow a lawyer's 
clerk — His earliest literary efforts — Death of his father — He 
decides to go to London — Leaves Norwich — The " veiled period '' 
— Borrow on Norwich — A chastened Borrow — The Norwich 
School of Artists—" Old " Crome. 

A DISTINGUISHED literary critic has expressed 
regret that no attempt has been made to recon- 
struct the literary life of Norwich during the earlier half 
of the nineteenth century. That no one has ventured 
upon the task is not, perhaps, surprising ; for whoever 
thought of doing so would find that the half century 
in question could scarcely be satisfactorily dealt with 

lOO 



NORWICH 101 

apart from the one preceding it, when influences were 
at work in the old city which undoubtedly had much to 
do with the subsequent remarkable development of local 
intellectual life ; while the initial effort of attaining even 
a perfunctory acquaintance with the immense mass of 
more or less literary work produced within the walls of 
Norwich, or by writers intimately connected with the 
city, would be so great and wearisome that only a writer 
possessing almost superhuman patience would be un- 
daunted by the magnitude of his undertaking. Indeed, 
it is not unlikely that at the outset he would come to 
the conclusion that his time might be better occupied ; 
for a consideration of the claims advanced by the various 
writers with whom he would have to deal would convince 
him that, however great an influence they had in their 
day, they produced little of permanent interest, and 
readers to-day care little about them or their works. 
Why this should be so is partly explained by Mrs. 
Herbert Jones in her interesting article on some of the 
"Worthies of Norwich," where she states that "the 
literary workers (of this period) . . . dealt, for the most 
part, with their present — moral, intellectual, or visible ; " 
for, although the intellectual life of any period must 
always be interesting, the presentment of it by a country 
town coterie could scarcely avoid being prejudiced by 
provincialism. Indeed, if the opinion of a reader who 
has simply " dipped " into some of the many and 
voluminous biographies of those forgotten, or almost 
forgotten worthies may be set down here, it is that their 
largely-quoted letters are as dreary reading as the 
"events" which occupied much of their time and 
attention are unexciting ; and if it were not for one 



102 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

rather spiteful autobiography and a more famous work 
which is largely autobiographical, we should have pre- 
served to us few facts of the lives of these provincial 
" intellectuals " which are really entertaining or en- 
livening. 

Yet no one can deny that the hundred years embraced 
by the latter half of the eighteenth century and the 
earlier half of the nineteenth are the years in the history 
of the old city of which it has best reason to be proud ; 
for certainly no English city of its size ever before had 
dwelling within its walls during any one century of its 
existence so many men and women whose names were 
so prominently before the public of their day. Almost 
every branch of literature — historical and romantic, 
theological and philosophical, biographical and editorial, 
critical and commentatory, moral, social, and political — 
was represented ; and contemporary with writers engaged 
in these directions were others distinguished as trans- 
lators, physicians, antiquaries, and naturalists. Con- 
spicuous among them, by reason of his peculiarities as 
well as his remarkable attainments, was William Taylor, 
whose period of prominence began in 1790, when he 
made his translation of Burger's "Lenore." Contemporary 
with him was Dr. Frank Sayers, who had been his 
schoolfellow at Mrs. Barbauld's famous little school at 
Palgrave, and who was a student of continental litera- 
ture, chiefly of Scandinavian and Danish poetry and 
mythology. "Dr. Sayers," writes Harriet Martineau in 
comparing him with Taylor, " ivas a scholar " of whom 
Norwich might well be proud ; and it was his deep 
knowledge and cultured mind which attracted to his 
house in the quiet Close the poet Southey, Sir James 



NORWICH 103 

Mackintosh, and other famous men of letters. Towards 
the close of the eighteenth century the death of Dr. 
William Enfield, the theological and philosophical 
writer, removed a prominent figure from local literary 
society. 

The names of Dr. Edward Rigby,^ the friend of 
" Coke of Norfolk," and a learned writer on subjects as 
diverse as medicine and farming ; of Thomas Amyot, 
who edited Windham's speeches, but was chiefly engaged 
in applying archaeological methods to the study of 
history ; and of Seth William Stevenson, antiquary, 
editor, and biographer, are wellnigh forgotten outside 
the city with which they were intimately connected ; 
and that of Henry Reeve, who was the son of a famous 
Norwich physician, is probably better known as that of 
a friend of Carlyle and Thackeray than of a writer whose 
death, as recently as 1895, terminated a brilliant literary 
and journalistic career. Nor do the associations with 
Norwich of John Austin, the celebrated jurist and friend 
of J. Stuart Mill ; of his wife Sarah Austin, who was the 
daughter of a Norwich yarn-maker, and who was as hand- 
some as she was gifted ; or of Charles Austin, who was 
for a time a doctor's assistant in the city, possess much 
interest for us to-day. As for Joseph John Gurney, the 
brother of the more famous Elizabeth Fry, his memory 
is still cherished as that of a great philanthropist, and 
the list of his religious works is not the briefest in the 

^ Dr. Rigby, who died in 1821, is buried at Framingham Earl, 
near Norwich, where, in allusion to his planting of trees, there is 
inscribed on his tombstone — 

" A monument to Rigby do you seek ? 
On every side the whispering woodlands speak." 



104. LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

" Dictionary of National Biography ; " but the glinnipse 
we get of him in " Lavengro " brings before us a more 
attractive personality than does Braithwaite's lengthy 
biography. Lady Eastlake, who was a daughter of Dr. 
Edward Rigby, is well remembered by those who had 
the privilege of her acquaintance ; but she was not so 
well known in Norwich as in London and Edinburgh, 
where she was a conspicuous figure in society for many 
years. 

The writer of a history of English literature which 
still finds acceptance as a student's manual, tells us that 
Amelia Opie's first novel, published in 1801, may even 
now be read with interest ; and thanks partly to her 
biographer, but more perhaps to Harriet Martineau's 
obituary notice of her, her personality still has some 
appeal for us. In spite of the opinion of the writer I 
have just quoted, it is hardly doubtful that no one reads 
her stories now ; and this, notwithstanding that they 
received the praise of such men as Southey and Sir 
Walter Scott, the latter of whom confessed to her that 
her " Father and Daughter " was a book " he had cried 
over more than he ever cried over such things ; " but the 
sudden transformation of a lady who, we are told, " dearly 
loved excitement" into a sober Quakeress is a sufficiently 
rare event to cause her to be remembered, especially in 
a city which was once a Quaker stronghold, and where 
most of the transformations in which Quakers have been 
concerned have been, quietly, in other directions. But 
Amelia Opie, although she became a Quaker, always 
had leanings towards the harmless pleasures of her 
unregenerate days. Evidence of this is found in her 
love of bright colours. She had a " passion for prisms," 



i 



NORWICH 105 

several of which were set in a frame, mounted like a 
pole-screen, and kept constantly in the room in which 
she sat. " Oh ! the exquisite beauty of the prisms on 
my ceiling just now," she wrote to a friend ; " it is a 
pleasure to exist only to look at it. I think that green 
parrots and macaws, flying about in their native woods, 
must look like that." Also, Mrs. Brightwell informs us, 
she " luxuriated " in flowers, the most luscious scents of 
which were " not too strong for her nerves." ** Light, 
heat, and fragrance were three indispensables for her." 
Far more remarkable was her regular habit of attending 
the assize trials, which had a great fascination for her ; 
and although she drew the line at being present when 
capital charges were being heard, she seems to have 
always had an unhealthy interest in murder cases. 
Shortly before her death the terrible Stanfield Hall 
murder occupied a good deal of her attention. She was 
living then in a house on the Castle Meadow, and during 
the trial of Rush she wrote in a note : 

" I know not what to do to-day, except look at the 
castle and watch the crowds on the plain, and the people 
continually passing, few walking, but most running, as 
if too much excited to do otherwise. Rush is on his 
defence. ... I dread to hear the verdict, and yet I wish 
all was over. . . . On my castle turrets, to the west, the 
sun set gloriously this evening, converting it into a mass 
of red granite ; and while I write the moon is shining 
into my room, ' looking tranquillity' But what is pass- 
ing within those castle walls ? A man, fierce as a tiger, 
is struggling for life at the awful bar of justice. . . . 
Within those walls I see that wretched man, writhing 
in mental agony, and against what, I fancy, he now 
believes inevitable doom ! " 



106 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EASTANGLIA 

The last five years of Amelia Opie's life were spent 
in the house on Castle Meadow — a house she described 
as a "pleasant cradle for reposing age," and from the 
windows of which she could see, not only the grand old 
castle on its huge mound, but the distant woods and 
rising ground of suburban Thorpe. Almost to the last 
— and she lived to a good old age — she kept around her 
a cheerful circle of firmly attached friends and admirers. 
Shortly after her death, Harriet Martineau, having 
remarked that " another of that curious class of English 
people — the provincial literary lion — has left us," wrote : 

"When she began to grow elderly, Amelia Opie 
became devote. Her life had been one of strong excite- 
ments ; and dearly she loved excitement ; and there was 
a promise of a long course of stimulation in becoming a 
Quaker, which probably impelled her unconsciously to 
take the decided step which astonished all her world. 
During Mr. Opie's life excitements abounded. After his 
death, and when her mourning was over, she wrote little 
novels, read them to admiring friends in Norwich, who 
cried their eyes out at the pathetic scenes, read in her 
dramatic manner, and then she carried them to London, 
got considerable sums by them, and enjoyed the homage 
they brought to her feet, sang at supper-tables, dressed 
splendidly, did not scruple being present at Lady Cork's 
and others' Sunday concerts, and was very nearly marry- 
ing a younger brother of Lord Bute. . . . But she 
suddenly discovered that all is vanity : she took to grey 
silks and muslin, and the 'thee' and 'thou,' quoted 
Habakkuk and Micah with gusto, and set her heart 
upon preaching. That, however, was not allowed . . . 
and her utterance was confined to loud sighs in the body 
of the Meeting." 

But even Miss Martineau draws a pleasing picture 



NORWICH 107 

of Mrs. Opie in her old age, and adds that with her 
" dies the last claim of the humbled city to the literary- 
prominence which was so dear to it in the last century." 
To Harriet Martineau, who spent the greater part 
of the first thirty years of her life in Norwich, and who 
commenced here her literary career, we owe some 
interesting glimpses into the social and literary life of 
the city during the first half of the nineteenth century ; 
but her own associations with Norwich are far less 
clearly defined than those of many of her con- 
temporaries ; for while she held a prominent position 
in the literary world she was living either in London or 
at Ambleside. It was through the advice of her brother 
James, the distinguished Unitarian divine, that she 
wrote her first article for a Unitarian monthly magazine ; 
and when it was accepted her elder brother, Thomas, was 
so impressed by its style that he told her to give up 
making shirts and darning stockings and devote herself 
to literature. A time soon arrived when the success 
which attended her ventures with the pen proved very 
useful to her ; for owing to the depression of trade in 
the years 1825 and 1826, her father, who was a large 
manufacturer in Norwich, was brought on to the verge 
of ruin, a trouble which hastened his end. But when 
she came to write her autobiography she had little to 
say about her Norwich days which is really pleasant 
reading, her reminiscences of most of her old acquaint- 
ances being recorded with much uncharitableness, 
several persons being mentioned with no apparent 
reason save to say something spiteful about them. But 
for this some excuse may be found in her almost chronic 
ill-health. Ouite from earliest childhood she was afflicted 



108 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EASTANGLIA 

with troublesome maladies, most of the unpleasant 
details of which she gave to the world when she wrote 
the story of her life ; and in addition to these troubles 
she suffered for many years from acute nervousness. So 
painfully nervous was she that she hated to be sent out 
to walk on the Castle Hill simply because the people 
dwelling in the houses below used to beat their feather- 
beds in the Castle Meadow. 

"That sound," she says, " — a dull shock — used to 
make my heart stand still : and it was no use my stand- 
ing at the rails above, and seeing the process. The 
striking of the blow and the arrival of the sound did not 
correspond ; and this made matters worse." 

The Martineaus were, of course, Unitarians, worship- 
ping in the old Octagon Chapel which contains several 
memorials of them. It had then, and probably has now, 
some curious windows in the roof, at which Harriet used 
to gaze — or, as she has it, "sit staring" — waiting for 
angels to come to her and take her to heaven " in sight 
of all the congregation — the end of the world being sure 
to happen while we were at chapel." But Harriet 
Martineau's account of herself as she was in the Norwich 
days is not particularly interesting. She is at her best (?) 
when she writes of others, as when she tells us that — 

" About this time there came to Norwich a foreigner 
who excited an unaccountable interest in our house — 
considering what exceedingly proper people we were, 
and how sharp a look-out we kept on the morals of our 
neighbours. It was poor Polidori, well known after- 
wards as Lord Byron's physician, as the author of ' The 
Vampire,' and as having committed suicide under 
gambling difficulties. When we knew him he was a 



NORWICH 109 

handsome, harum-scarum young man — taken up by 
William Taylor as William Taylor did take up harum- 
scarum young men." 

He was an avowed admirer of Harriet's eldest sister, 
and — 

" We younger ones romanced amazingly about him 
— drew his remarkable profile on the backs of all our 
letters, dreamed of him, listened to all his marvellous 
stories, and, when he got a concussion of the brain by 
driving against a tree in Lord Stafford's park, were 
inconsolable. If he had (happily) died then, he would 
have remained a hero in our imaginations." 

Of most of the literary celebrities of her day we get 
fleeting glimpses in the pages of Miss Martineau's auto- 
biography ; but only one of them — and one whom she 
mentions most disparagingly — has taken a place among 
the " immortals." Upon his Norwich contemporaries, 
with one or two exceptions, George Borrow failed to 
make any favourable impression ; and if we may judge 
— which is hardly fair, perhaps — by Miss Martineau's 
assertions concerning him, he was not popular with 
them. But like Miss Martineau herself, he possessed a 
strong personality, and this, combined with a curious 
simplicity so manifest in his writings that we see the 
man himself, with all his idiosyncracies, as through a 
transparent veil, has won for him thousands of admirers 
who love him in spite of himself, and turn to his books 
again and again under the influence of a like spell to 
that cast upon them by Don Quixote or Benvenuto 
Cellini. In his day he was much assailed by critics 
because of those very prejudices and inconsistencies 



110 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

which now attract and entertain us. As Mr. Augustine 
Birrell says : 

" Borrow's books — carelessly written, impatient, 
petulant, in parts repellant — have been found so full of 
the elixir of life, of the charm of existence, of the glory 
of motion, so instinct with character, and mood, and 
wayward fancy, that their very names are sounds of 
enchantment, while the fleeting scenes they depict and 
the deeds they describe have become the properties and 
the pastimes for all the years that are still to be of a 
considerable fraction of the English speaking race." 

For invalids, as the same critic assures us, and we 
can well believe, there are no books like Borrow's. Mrs. 
Opie, when confined to her room by illness, wrote : 
" Long live Don Jorge ! he is my delight both night 
and morning, and my happiest hours are spent in his 
society." She was then reading the " Bible in Spain." 

George Borrow first came to Norwich in 1814, when 
he was eleven years old ; and while his parents occupied 
lodgings at the Crown and Angel in St. Stephen's 
Street, he attended the Grammar School in the Upper 
Close, his brother John meanwhile studying drawing 
and painting as a pupil of the old city's famous artist, 
John Crome. But the preparations for war which 
followed the escape of Napoleon from Elba, included 
the calling out of the West Norfolk Militia, and Captain 
Thomas Borrow, with his wife and two sons, had to be 
with his regiment until June, 18 16, when he settled down 
in Norwich for the rest of his life. The house he 
occupied stands in a small yard now known as Borrow's 
Court, which is entered by a narrow tunnel-like passage 
from Willow Lane, which branches off St. Giles Street, 



NORWICH 111 

a little way westward of the Guildhall. It is a plain 
two-storeyed house, in which few alterations have been 
made since the Borrows lived in it ; but its front was 
then covered with ivy and some tall poplars shaded the 
dingy little court. 

At the old Grammar School, of which the head- 
master at that time was the Rev. Edward Valpy, George 
had for schoolfellows James Brooke, afterwards the 
famous Rajah of Sarawak ; Archdale Wilson ; John 
Lindley, whose name became noteworthy as that of a 
careful botanist ; and James Martineau, whose death a 
few years ago robbed England of one of her most 
scholarly Unitarian divines. As a scholar George failed 
to distinguish himself in any way ; according to Canon 
Jessopp, who was afterwards headmaster of the school, 
there was a tradition that he was indolent and even 
stupid ; but one of his boyish escapades was well 
remembered in after days by some of his contemporaries 
at the school. Inspired, in all probability, by sensational 
tales he had read of pirates and highwaymen, the idea 
came into his head of running away from home, making 
a cave among the Norfolk sand dunes, and there leaguing 
himself with the local smugglers. In carrying out his 
plans he had two or three youthful accomplices. They 
started from Norwich early one morning by the Yar- 
mouth road, carrying with them some horse-pistols they 
had purloined, and various provisions, including a supply 
of potatoes ; but they had only reached a point about 
three miles from the city when the courage of one of 
the adventurers failed him and he returned home ; the 
others continued their journey as far as the Broadland 
village of Acle, about eleven miles from Norwich, where 



112 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

they halted to partake of some refreshment. While 
seated by the roadside they were recognised by a gentle- 
man who was driving by as his son's schoolfellows, and, 
suspecting they were "playing truant," he stopped and 
enquired into their proceedings. If the verses George 
afterwards wrote contain an accurate report of the con- 
versation that ensued, he must have been a singularly 
rude boy, well deserving the thrashing that was in store 
for him. According to his verses, the "Benevolent 
Gentleman " addressed the wanderers thus : 

" Return, poor thoughtless children, home. 
Or evil will ensue ; 
There's sad temptation in the world 
For children such as you." 

To this appeal the "Eldest Child," that is, George, 
adopting, no doubt, the slang of one of his favourite 
heroes, replied : 

" O stop a clapper on your jaw ! 
We hate such stuff and cant ; 
And keep your counsel for yourself ; 
The rhino's what we want." 

But, notwithstanding the youthful ringleader's bounce 
and rudeness, the *' benevolent gentleman " invited the 
runaways to dine with him at a neighbouring inn ; and, 
while they were thus engaged, secretly sent a despatch 
to Dr. Valpy, informing him of the whereabouts of his 
truant scholars. As a result, a carriage arrived at Acle 
late in the evening, and into it, in spite of young 
Borrow's protests, the boys were bundled and conveyed 
back to their homes. 

The sequel, as Dr. Knapp remarks, was "short and 



NORWICH 113 

painful." George, as the ringleader of the would-be 
buccaneers, was taken in hand by Dr. Valpy, hoisted 
upon the back of James Martineau and flogged, we are 
told in one account, so severely that he " had to keep 
his bed for a fortnight, and would carry the marks for 
the remainder of his days." For this he is said to have 
hated the Grammar School and the celebrated Unitarian 
divine for ever after. Miss Frances Power Cobbe, who 
was afterwards Borrow's neighbour in Hereford Square, 
Brompton, writes in her Autobiography : 

" The early connection between the two old men as I 
knew them was irresistibly comic to my mind. When 
I asked Mr. Borrow once to come and meet some friends 
at our house, he accepted our invitation as usual, but, 
on finding that Dr. Martineau was to be of the party, 
hastily withdrew his acceptance, nor did he ever after 
attend our little assemblies without first ascertaining 
that Dr. Martineau would not be present." 

Dr. Martineau's account of the "hoisting" business 
is, however, that it was nothing exceptional, or capable 
of leaving permanent scars, Mr. Valpy not being given 
to excess of that kind. Borrow as a schoolboy, he 
writes : 

" Used to gather about him three or four favourite 
schoolfellows, . . , and with a sheet of paper and a book 
on his knee, invent and tell a story, making rapid little 
pictures of such ' Dramatis Personse ' that came upon 
the stage. The plot was woven and spread out with 
much ingenuity ; and the characters were various and 
well discriminated. But two of them were sure to turn 
up in every tale — the Devil and the Pope: and the 
working of the drama invariably had the same issue — 
the utter ruin and dissfracc of these two Potentates. I 



114 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OFEASTANGLIA 

have often thought that there was a presage here of the 
mission which produced the * Bible in Spain.' " 

George may have been an idle boy, but there can 
be no doubt that at this time he was a dreamer ; and 
we have no reason to discredit his own assertion that 
he had not been long in Norwich when he became 
possessed by that desire to learn foreign languages 
which led him to study so many more than he was able 
to master. He first applied himself to French and 
Italian, finding an instructor in the Abbe D'Eterville, 
a French imigri who had come to Norwich in 1792, 
and at the time when Borrow met him was living in 
that fine old fifteenth century house in St. Andrew's 
Street, now called Strangers' Hall. Concerning this 
worthy — *' exul sacerdos ; vone banished priest " he 
called himself — Borrow has a good deal to say in 
"Lavengro," and especially in that extended edition lately 
edited by Dr. Knapp. But he did not devote his time 
entirely to foreign languages. 

"I had not forgotten," he writes, "the roving life 
I had led in former days nor its delights ; neither was 
I formed by Nature to be a pallid indoor student. No, 
no ! I was fond of other and, I say it boldly, better 
things than study. I had an attachment to the angle, 
ay, and to the gun likewise. . . . Sallying forth with it 
... far into the country, I seldom returned at night 
without a string of bullfinches, blackbirds, and linnets 
hanging in triumph round my neck." 

And after writing this he has the impudence to add : 
" I speak as a fowler ! " One of his favourite haunts 
when he went out fishing was that part of the Yare 
which flows at the foot of the lawn sloping down from 



NORWICH 115 

the front of the old home of the Gurneys at Earlham ; 
and it was there one day, when he was trespassing, 
apparently, on the Earlham grounds, that he was 
discovered by that fine old Quaker gentleman, Joseph 
John Gurney, whose gentle remonstrances with him had 
the effect of making him less fond of the "cruel fishing," 
and who was afterwards mainly instrumental in his 
obtaining such employment from the Bible Society as 
took him to Russia and Spain. 

But Sorrow's early experiences of a wandering life 
seem to have given him a strong inclination for the 
company of wandering folk, and probably he was never 
happier than when he could abandon study and steal 
away on to the Castle Hill on a market or fair day and 
mingle with the gipsies who came there to sell their 
horses and display their skilful horsemanship. For 
that same Castle Hill, which is still the chief horse and 
cattle mart in the Eastern counties, has for many years 
been a centre towards which roving folk have gravitated, 
and even now there is no better place one can go to 
who wishes to meet the sturdy farming folk of East 
Anglia, and make the acquaintance of some of the few 
surviving genuine Romanies, together with other strange 
and interesting " men of the road." Borrow's biographer, 
who spent a long time in Norwich while solving the 
many puzzles of his hero's career, seems to have looked 
upon the Castle Hill as a rather fearsome place on 
account of its " discordant " noises and " mettlesome 
steeds," and certainly it is the last place where a grave 
professor of Yale would be likely to feel at home ; but 
even he was impressed by the variety of human types 
to be met with there, " representing every character in 



116 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OFEASTANGLIA 

British fiction from Fielding to Thackeray." Borrow, 
however, was chiefly attracted by the swarthy gipsies, 
and it was on the Hill that he encountered once more 
the notable Ambrose Petulengro, whom readers of 
" Lavengro " know so well as " Jasper," and whose 
acquaintance he had made so strangely in the lane at 
Norman Cross. But so greatly does the speech of 
Borrow's gipsies differ from that of most of the Romanies 
we meet to-day, that one can hardly believe that when 
George expressed surprise at Jasper's remembering him, 
he replied : — 

" Not so strange as you may think, brother ; there 
Is something in your face which would prevent people 
from forgetting you, even though they might wish it ; 
and your face is not much altered since the time you 
wot of, though you are so much grown. I thought it 
was you, but to make sure I dodged about, inspecting 
you. I believe you felt me, though I never touched 
you ; a sign, brother, that we are akin, that we are did 
palor — two relations. Your blood beat when mine was 
near, as mine always does at the coming of a brother ; 
and we became brothers in that lane." 

In these few sentences there are at least four words 
an ordinary gipsy would hardly use ; but then Borrow's 
gipsies were not ordinary gipsies. 

From the Castle Hill, George and the gipsy descended 
among the low-lying streets around the Cathedral, crossed 
the fine old thirteenth century Bishop's Bridge, and 
scaled the heights of Household Heath, then the wild 
tract of furze and heather we see in the famous picture 
by Old Crome. There the gipsies had their encamp- 
ment, in a sheltered valley between two low hills, and 



NORWICH 117 

George made the acquaintance of Tawno Chikno's wife, 
Mrs. Petulengro, and the terrible old Mrs. Heme. 
There, too, during that and other visits to the tents of 
the rovers, he held those wonderful dialogues with 
Jasper, in one of which the gipsy — or was it Borrow, 
when he had had bitter experience of life } — uttered 
words of wisdom which have taught, and may still 
teach, a great and abiding truth. 

" ' Life is sweet, brother.' 

" ' Do you think so ? ' 

" ' Think so ! There's night and day, brother, both 
sweet things ; sun, moon, and stars, brother, all sweet 
things ; there's likewise a wind on the heath. Life is 
very sweet, brother ; who would wish to die ? ' 

" ' I would wish to die ' 

"'You talk like a gorgio — which is the same as 
talking like a fool. Were you a Rommany Chal you 
would talk wiser. Wish to die, indeed ! A Rommany 
Chal would wish to live for ever.' 

" ' In sickness, Jasper ? ' 

" ' There's the sun and stars, brother.' 

" ' In bhndness, Jasper ? ' 

" ' There's the wind on the heath ; if I could only 
feel that, I would gladly live for ever.' " 

From frequent meeting with the gipsies, George was 
led to add the mysterious Romany tongue to the 
languages in which he dabbled like a goose in muddy 
water ; and a little later, at the instigation of William 
Taylor, he " took up " German, at the same time acquir- 
ing from that gifted but dissipated philosopher certain 
ideas which in those days, when free-thinking Avas 
looked upon as something very dreadful, brought him 
into sad disgrace with the more steady-going of his 



118 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EASTANGLIA 

acquaintances. Taylor was a friend of Southey, to 
whom he wrote : — 

"A Norwich young man is construing with me 
Schiller's ' Wilhelm Tell,' with the view of translating 
it for the press. His name is George Henry Borrow, 
and he has learnt German with extraordinary rapidity ; 
indeed, he has the gift of tongues, and though not yet 
eighteen understands twelve languages — English, Welsh, 
Erse, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, German, Danish, French, 
Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese." 

Harriet Martineau is less flattering to Borrow ; for 
she tells us that when Taylor's intemperate habits made 
him an "impossible" companion for ladies, he got 
around him " a set of ignorant and conceited young 
men who thought they could set the world right by 
their destructive propensities. One of his chief favourites 
was George Borrow." 

And in describing the old city as she could remember 
it, she wrote : — 

"Norwich, which has now no social claims to 
superiority at all, was in my childhood a rival of 
Lichfield itself, in the time of the Sewards, for literary 
pretensions and the vulgarity of pedantry. William 
Taylor was then at his best, when there was something 
like fulfilment of his early promise, when his exemplary 
filial duty was a fine spectacle to the whole city, and 
before the vice which destroyed him had coarsened 
his morale and destroyed his intellect. During the 
war it was a great distinction to know anything of 
German literature, and in Mr. Taylor's case it proved 
a ruinous distinction. He was completely spoiled by 
the flatteries of shallow men, pedantic women, and 
conceited lads." 



NORWICH 119 

Elsewhere she says : — 

" When William Taylor became eminent as almost 
the only German scholar in England, old Norwich was 
very proud, and grew, to say the truth, excessively 
conceited. . . . She boasted of her intellectual supper- 
parties, where, amidst a pedantry which would now 
make Laughter hold both his sides, there was much 
that was pleasant and salutary : and finally she called 
herself the Athens of England ... a provincial city up 
in a corner, which called itself Athens." 

As yet, however. Borrow had hardly been admitted 
into this "pleasant and salutary" society; for while 
Taylor was exerting his influence upon him, his time 
was chiefly occupied with the duties of a lawyer's clerk 
in Messrs. Simpson and Rackham's office in Tuck's 
Court, St. Giles. The head of this firm was William 
Simpson, Town Clerk of Norwich, whose full-length 
portrait now hangs in the Guildhall An almost equally 
good idea of him can be gained from Borrow's pen- 
portrait of him in "Lavengro," though less space is 
devoted to him there than is given in the opening 
chapter of " Wild Wales " to his Welsh groom. With 
Messrs. Simpson and Rackham, George remained 
during the five years for which he was articled to them ; 
but he seems to have acquired only a very slight 
knowledge of law, preferring rather to spend his time in 
learning languages, making translations, and dreaming 
dreams. He had not been long in the lawyer's office 
before he turned his hand from copying deeds to 
rendering into English verse certain German and Danish 
ballads, and, having been introduced by Taylor to the 
editors of the "New Monthly" and the "Monthly 



120 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

Magazine," he succeeded in getting some of his verses 
inserted in their pages. His most ambitious effort was 
a translation of Burger's " Lenore." It was, remarks his 
biographer, "probably the worst attempt ever per- 
petrated on the ' benevolent reader,' and coming after 
the excellent performances of Taylor and Scott, was, to 
say the least, a case of inexcusable presumption." He 
also wrote an original article on "Danish Poetry and 
Ballad Writing." These, his earliest efforts in literature, 
were, for reasons best known to himself, signed " George 
Olaus Borrow." It is evident that at the outset of his 
literary career, he set his feet into a morass in which he 
was destined to flounder miserably and helplessly for 
several years, and from which he was not to escape 
until disgust nerved him to force a way to freedom. 
For his venturing into what Mr. Thomas Seccombe 
calls "a veritable cul-de-sac of literature," the chief 
responsibility lies with William Taylor. 

In February, 1824, within a few days of the time 
when George would be free to take his leave of the 
lawyer's office, his father died and was buried in the 
churchyard of St. Giles. An annual income oi £\oo a 
year was left to his widow — all that the old captain's 
little property could produce — so it was at once evident 
to George that he must be up and doing something for 
himself. For some time his health had not been good ; 
but apparently he imagined it a good deal worse than 
it really was ; and when the death of his father brought 
him face to face with the need for action, he was not 
long in deciding what he would do. In a letter written 
to his friend Roger Kerrison, about a fortnight before 
the term of his clerkship expired, he expressed an 



NORWICH 121 

intention " to live in London, write plays, poetry, etc., 
abuse religion, and get myself prosecuted, for I would 
not for an ocean of gold remain any longer than I am 
forced in this dull and gloomy town." What fate had 
in store for him is well known to readers of" Lavengro ; " 
but bad as it proved to be, it was no worse than might 
have been anticipated for a morose and impatient youth 
who went out into the world with such mad intentions 
and so ill-equipped to fight the battle of life. Fortunately 
for him, and for us, a time came when he had the sense 
to recognize how ill-directed were his ambitions and to 
profit by a recognition of his folly. But at the outset, 
he was impatient to taste the joys of " freedom." His 
articles with Messrs. Simpson and Rackham expired 
on March 30th, 1824, and two days later — there is 
suggestiveness in the date — he started for London by 
the Ipswich Mail. 

From what was for a long time called the " veiled 
period " of Borrow's life, the curtain has been almost 
entirely lifted by his biographer, Dr. Knapp ; and we 
now know that although George, when disappointed 
with the result of his literary efforts in London, certainly 
did " take to the road," and probably did meet with the 
adventures recounted in " Lavengro," the greater part 
of the ensuing seven years was spent in Norwich and 
chiefly devoted to hack-work for publishers, news- 
papers, and magazines. And it is evident that in 
course of time he came to have a better opinion 
of the " dull and gloomy " old city ; for when, during 
the quiet days at Oulton, he sat down to write of 
his life here, he saw the city through rose-coloured 
glasses. 



122 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

" A fine old city, truly, is that," he says, " view- 
it from whatever side you will ; but it shows best 
from the east, where the ground, bold and elevated, 
overlooks the fair and fertile valley in which it stands. 
Gazing from these heights, the eye beholds a scene 
which cannot fail to awaken, even in the least sensitive 
bosom, feelings of pleasure and admiration. At the 
foot of the heights flows a narrow and deep river, 
with an antique bridge communicating with a long 
and narrow suburb, flanked on either side by rich 
meadows of the brightest green, beyond which 
spreads the city ; the fine old city, perhaps the most 
curious specimen at present extant of the genuine old 
English town. Yes, there it spreads from north to 
south, with its venerable houses, its numerous gardens, 
its thrice twelve churches, its mighty mound, which, if 
tradition speaks true, was raised by human hands to 
serve as the grave heap of an old heathen king, who sits 
deep within it, with his sword in his hand, and his gold 
and silver treasures about him. There is a grey old 
castle upon the top of that mighty mound ; and yonder, 
rising three hundred feet above the soil, from among 
those noble forest trees, behold that old Norman master- 
work, that cloud-encircled cathedral spire, around which 
a garrulous army of rooks and choughs continually 
wheel their flight. Now, who can wonder that the 
children of that fine old city are proud of her, and offer 
up prayers for her prosperity ? I, myself, who was not 
born within her walls, offer up prayers for her prosperity, 
that want may never visit her cottages, vice her palaces, 
and that the abomination of idolatry may never pollute 
her temples. Ha ! idolatry ! the reign of idolatry has 
been over there for many a long year, never more, let 
us hope, to return; brave hearts in that old town have 
borne witness against it, and sealed their testimony 
with their hearts' blood — most precious to the Lord is 
the blood of His saints ! we are not far from hallowed 
ground." 



NORWICH 123 

Here we have an enthusiastic but chastened Borrow, 
differing as much from the Borrow who went raging up 
to London to " abuse religion and get himself prose- 
cuted " as a skipping lamb differs from a roaring lion. 
But the change in him was not wrought without the 
infliction of many trials and much tribulation ; not in a 
day was the raw, raving youth who could 

" Drink at a draught a pint of rum, 
And then be neither sick or dumb," 

transformed into the ardent agent of the British and 
Foreign Bible Society. 

As I have already said, it was his old acquaintance 
of the angling days at Earlham who secured for him 
the employment which has resulted in our possessing 
" The Bible in Spain." This occurred at the end of the 
year 1832, and, according to Harriet Martineau, the 
news that " this polyglott gentleman " had appeared 
before the public as a devout agent of the Bible Society 
caused " one burst of laughter from all who remembered 
the old Norwich days." But Borrow was to visit Russia 
before making his first journey into Spain ; and as for 
his adventures in those countries, are they not written 
in the book of Dr. Knapp and " The Bible in Spain" ? 

At the beginning of this chapter, an attempt is 
made to convey some idea of the literary life of Norwich 
during the latter half of the eighteenth century and the 
earlier half of the nineteenth. Before turning to some 
of the earlier literary associations of the old city, one 
may be excused for calling attention to the fact that 
the same hundred years which saw Norwich so famous 
for its literary life, also saw the rise and decline of that 



124 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

School of Artists for which Norwich is perhaps even 
more renowned to-day than for its long roll of famous 
men and women of letters. In the diaries and letters 
of the Norwich " intellectuals " of their day, references 
to " Old " Crome and John Sell Cotman are few and 
unenlightening ; sons, respectively, of a poor innkeeper 
and a linen-draper, these talented artists could hardly 
have dwelt in any city or town where their exceptional 
ability would have been less likely to receive full 
recognition than in Norwich. George Borrow has left 
us a glowing eulogy of Crome, and it is only natural, 
perhaps, that he, a lover of the heath, the highway, and 
the greenwood, should have appreciated the painter 
of Mousehold Heath and The Coming of the Storm 
a good deal better than could those local dignitaries 
and celebrities who were having their portraits painted 
by Beechey. Crome, with an oyster shell for a palette 
when he could not get a better one, went straight to 
Nature, and like Constable and Gainsborough, who 
were also East Anglians, he found the subjects of most 
of his best works in his own immediate homeland. Out 
of material, apparently, the most unpromising he made 
masterpieces, putting into practice his advice to his 
son : " John, my boy, paint ; but paint for fame ; and if 
your subject is only a pig-sty — dignify it ! " To-day, 
the little man stands out among the Norwich celebrities 
of his day almost as boldly as a giant among pygmies 
— a master among mannikins. As has recently been 
said of him, he " is great because he was a stay-at- 
home ; because he studied Nature, not Art ; because, 
like Millet, he was strong, large, elemental, and because 
he had mastered his craft." In Cotman, Starke, and 



NORWICH 125 

Vincent, he had worthy artistic contemporaries in 
Norwich ; but when one hears the Norwich School of 
Artists mentioned, the figure of Old Crome, the errand 
boy who became one of the greatest of British artists, 
at once stands before us. Of late, more than ever, he 
has occupied a prominent place in the literature of Art 
— a fact which is, perhaps, my only justification for 
introducing him into these pages. 



CHAPTER VIII 
SIR THOMAS BROWNE AND BISHOP HALL 

Simon Wilkin, the editor of Sir Thomas Browne — Browne's 
arrival in Norwich — Publication of " Religio Medici," " Vulgar 
Errors," and " Urn Burial" — Browne's Norwich home — His corre- 
spondents — Visited by Evelyn — WiUiam Wotton — A quiet life- 
story — Browne's domestic correspondence — " Honest Tom " — 
Letters to Dr. Edward Browne — Local Gossip — Highwaymen — 
Sir Thomas as a naturalist — Coleridge on the " Garden of Cyrus " 
— Browne as an antiquary — His "habit" of clothing — His death 
— An unpleasant sequel — Bishop Hall — His release from the 
Tower — Made Bishop of Norwich — Ejected from his palace — 
"Hard Measure" — Removes to Heigham — The Dolphin Inn — 
Hall's latter years — His death — His tomb. 

DURING the latter years of William Taylor's life, 
and while his protege^ George Borrow, after 
attempting to set the Thames on fire, was engaged in 
his early work for the Bible Society, a native of the 
village of Costessy, in Norfolk, Simon Wilkin by name, 
was well employed in laboriously preparing for the 
press the collected works of the greatest scholar and 
most original thinker that ever dwelt within the walls 
of Norwich. More than a century had elapsed since 
the mortal remains of Sir Thomas Browne had been laid 
to rest in the heart of the city in which he had spent the 
greater part of his life ; and during that time various 
editions of his better known works had been published, 

126 



SIR THOMAS BROWNE AND BISHOP HALL 127 

with the result that at least one of them had established 
itself as an English classic ; but until Wilkin set 
himself the task of bringing together all — or nearly all 
— his writings, and collecting every scrap of available 
information concerning their learned author, little was 
known of the personality of Sir Thomas Browne and, 
save for one or two brief glimpses of him in contem- 
porary writings, practically nothing of his life in the 
city of his adoption. And even his careful and diligent 
editor was able to discover only a few really interesting 
facts about him. We know that he had many and 
various interests, and that during his mature years he 
can have spent few idle days ; but his life seems to 
have been a quiet and uneventful one, notwithstanding 
that it included the stirring years of the Civil War of 
Charles the First's reign, the whole of the Common- 
wealth, and nearly a quarter of a century ensuing upon 
the Restoration. During his residence in Norwich he 
saw the city put in a state of defence against the 
Royalists, its fine old cathedral despoiled by fanatics, 
and, subsequently, the restoration of a king celebrated 
with as much rejoicing as had hailed the triumph of the 
Parliament ; but by these stirring events he appears to 
have been less moved than by the discovery of an 
ancient burial urn or the acquisition of a rare bird or 
flower. So far as we can ascertain, he seems to have 
been so occupied with his books, his musings, his 
scientific researches, and his domestic affairs, that he 
had very little time to give to political matters ; content 
with meditative ramblings and the quiet of his study, 
he dwelt as on a restful islet in a troubled sea. 

Neither Norwich nor East Ansrlia can claim Sir 



128 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EASTANGLIA 

Thomas Browne as a native, for he was born in London, 
where his father was a Cheapside mercer, and he 
belonged to a family which had been connected with 
Upton, in Cheshire, for several generations ; but he 
came to reside in the Norfolk capital when he was little 
more than thirty years of age, and he lived here for the 
rest of his life. Before settling down in the city, he had 
practised as a physician at Shipden Hall, near Halifax ; 
and his removal from that place is believed to have been 
due to his desire for a wider field of action ; but the 
influence of friends in Norfolk probably led to his 
choosing Norwich ^ to practise in. About four years 
after his arrival here, he married Dorothy, the fourth 
daughter of Edward Mileham, whose home was at 
Burlingham St. Peter ; and a few months later the 
unauthorized publication of his " Religio Medici " — 
which seems to have been written while he was at 
Shipden Hall — made him famous. Four years later he 
printed his " Pseudodoxia Epidemica, or Enquiries into 
Vulgar and Common Errors," and after a lapse of 
twelve years the discovery of some ancient burial urns 
at Walsingham, in Norfolk, led him to write his famous 

1 In the " Norfolk Antiquarian Miscellany" (2nd Series, Part I., 
pp. 83-85) Mr. Walter Rye suggests that Browne may have come 
to Norwich on the suggestion of some rich relative. At that 
time there were living in the city an Alderman William Browne, 
who was a flourishing draper and occupied the " Samson and 
Hercules" House (so-called from the figures supporting the 
portico) on Tombland ; also a John Browne, residing in the same 
parish of St. George Tombland. The fact that no one has been 
able to ascertain where Browne lived in Norwich during the early 
part of his time here may be accounted for, as Mr, Rye remarks, 
if he was living in a kinsman's house. 




MANTELPlIiCE FORMERLY IN SIR THOMAS BROWNKS HOUSE IX NORWICH 

NOW IN STOKE HOLY CROSS HAI.L 



SIR THOMAS BROWNE AND BISHOP HALL 129 

essay on " Urn Burial," which was issued with his 
" Garden of Cyrus," With the exception of some short 
papers, these were the last of his works issued in his 
lifetime. Sundry tracts on various subjects were printed 
after his death, which occurred in 1682 ; but, owing to 
the manuscript being mislaid, his " Christian Morals " 
did not appear until 1716, when the first edition, pre- 
pared for the press by Dr. John Jeffery, Archdeacon 
of Norwich, was printed at Cambridge. 

The few known facts of his life in Norwich are 
easily summarized. We are told that soon after his 
settlement in the city he was much resorted to " for his 
admirable skill in physick " ; but in what part of 
Norwich he lived before his marriage, and during the 
first few years of his wedded life, is doubtful. In 1650, 
however, he seems to have been residing in the parish 
of St. Peter Mancroft, and by that time he had probably 
taken possession of a house which stood at the southern 
end of the "Walk," bordering the market-place on its 
east side. In this house, which has long been de- 
molished, he dwelt for the remainder of his life. He 
was in frequent correspondence with several of the 
most distinguished men of his time, among them being 
John Evelyn and Sir William Dugdale, the former of 
whom sought his assistance as a botanist, while the 
latter applied to him for aid in connection with his great 
work on " Imbanking and Draining." To Dr. Christopher 
Merrett he sent several interesting letters dealing with 
the natural history of Norfolk ; and from an Icelandic 
correspondent he contrived to extract certain informa- 
tion concerning a then little-known island. Two of 
his most intimate friends were Sir Hamon le Strange, 

K 



130 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

of Hunstanton (who was a keen naturalist), and Robert 
Paston, Earl of Yarmouth, who was a frequent traveller 
abroad, and as fond as Browne himself of picking up 
curious information. In September, 1671, King Charles 
II., accompanied by his Queen, paid a visit to Norwich, 
and conferred the honour of knighthood upon Browne, 
the ceremony taking place in St. Andrew's Hall, or, as 
it was then called, the " New Hall." Early in the 
following month, Evelyn, who had joined the royal 
party at Euston Hall, in Suffolk, the seat of the Earl of 
Arlington, was persuaded by Lord Henry Howard to 
accompany him to Norwich. 

" This," he writes, " as I could not refuse I was not 
hard to be persuaded to, having a desire to see that 
famous scholar and physitian. Dr. T. Browne, author of 
the ' Religio Medici,' and ' Vulgar Errors,' etc., now 
lately knighted. Thither then went my lord and I 
alone, in his flying chariot with six horses ; and by the 
way, discoursing with me of severall of his concernes, he 
aquainted me of his going to marry his eldest sonn to 
one of the king's natural daughters by the Dutchesse of 
Cleaveland, by which he reckon'd he should come into 
mighty favour. 

"Next morning I went to see Sir Tho. Browne 
(with whom I had some time corresponded by letter, 
tho' I had never seen him before). His whole house 
and garden being a paradise and cabinet of rarities, and 
that of the best collections, especially medails, books, 
plants, and natural things. Amongst other curiosities. 
Sir Thomas had a collection of the eggs of all the foule 
and birds he could procure, that country (especially the 
promontory of Norfolck) being frequented, as he said, 
by severall kinds, which seldom or never go farther into 
the land, as cranes, storkes, eagles, and a variety of 
water-foule. He led me to see all the remarkable 



SIR THOMAS BROWNE AND BISHOP HALL 131 

places of this ancient citty, being one of the largest, and 
certainly, after London, one of the noblest of England, 
for its venerable cathedrall, number of stately churches, 
cleannesse of the streetes, and buildings of flints, so 
exquisitely headed and squared, as I was much 
astonished at ; but he told me they had lost the art of 
squaring the flints, in which they once so much excell'd, 
and of which the churches, best houses, and walls, are 
built. The castle is an antique extent of ground, which 
they now call Marsfield, and would have been a fitting 
area to have placed the ducal palace on. The suburbs 
are large, the prospects sweete, with other amenities, 
not omitting the flower gardens, in which all the 
inhabitants excel. The fabric of stuffs brings a vast 
trade to this populous towne." 

In the course of the following year William Wotton, 
afterwards the friend of Richard Bentley, but then a 
precocious child of six, was brought to Sir Thomas 
Browne in order that the latter might testify to his 
remarkable cleverness, which he did as follows : — 

" I do hereby declare and certify, that I heard 
Wm. Wotton, son of Mr. Henry Wotton, of Wrentham, 
of the age of six years, read a stanza in Spencer very 
distinctly, and pronounce it properly. As also some 
verses in the ist Eclogue of Virgil, which I purposely 
chose out, and also construe the same truly. Also 
some verses in Homer, and the Carmina Aurea of 
Pythagoras, which he read well and construed. As he 
did also the 1st verse of the 4th ch. of Genesis in 
Hebrew, which I purposely chose out. July 20, 1672. 
Tho. Browne." 

In the story of the remaining years of Browne's 
life, as told by Wilkin, there is no event standing out 
in the slightest relief; and we may assume that those 



132 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EASTANGLIA 

years were passed in quiet study and observation, in 
meditating on those problems of life, death, and immor- 
tality which always fascinated him, "in a moth-like 
flitting to and fro in regions where no certainty can be 
attained." His was a life to baffle the biographer in 
quest of such knowledge of his subject as would enable 
him to describe him under varied circumstances calcu- 
lated to reveal clearly his many-sided individuality ; 
and for real knowledge of him we are almost entirely 
indebted to his books and correspondence, which, if 
read with a purpose for which they were not primarily 
intended, enable the reader to fill many blanks in his 
scanty biography. With the aid of their revelation of 
interests and occasional hints of rambles taken and 
observations made, we can piece together a quiet life- 
story and in a measure reconstruct a personality of which 
we have no very enlightening contemporary presentment. 
Turning to Browne's domestic correspondence, we 
soon make a favourable estimate of him as a father 
from his letters to his younger son Thomas, who, at the 
early age of fourteen, was sent alone to France to 
increase his knowledge of the world. Dr. Browne, who 
generally addresses him as " Honest Tom," gives him 
much good advice as to how he should conduct himself 
in his strange surroundings. He tells him to 

**be courteous and civil to all, put on a decent boldness 
and avoid pudor rusticus, not much known in France. 
Hold firm to the Protestant religion," he adds, " and be 
diligent in going to church when you have any little 
knowledge of the language. God will accept of your 
desires to serve him in his public worship tho' you 
cannot make it out to your desires." 



SIR THOMAS BROWNE AND BISHOP HALL 133 

He promises not to forget to send Tom a New Year's 
gift, and playfully signs himself "Vostre tres chere 
Pere." In a later letter he trusts that Tom has by now 
"got somewhat beyond Plaist il and ouy Monsieur ;'' 
and after telling him of some additions to his coin 
collection, and giving him some news of what was 
going on in Norwich, asks him not to send home 
any gifts. 

"Good boy, doe not trouble thyself to send us 
anything, either wine or bacon . . . You may stay your 
stomack with little pastys some times in cold mornings, 
for I doubt sea larks will be too dear a collation and 
drawe to too much wine down ; be warie for Rochelle 
was a place of too much good fellowship and a very 
drinking town, as I observed when I was there." 

Young Thomas Browne subsequently entered the 
navy, making his first voyage into the Mediterranean 
on board the Foresight. On returning to England he 
joined the fleet under command of James, Duke of 
York and the Earl of Sandwich, and was present at the 
first great action fought with the Dutch off Lowestoft. 
Soon after he distinguished himself in an attempt made 
to seize the two Dutch East Indian fleets which had 
sheltered in Bergen harbour. After this he saw much 
fighting, but of his career subsequent to 1667 we know 
nothing. It seems not unlikely that he was drowned at 
sea. On the occasion of his first cruise, his father wrote 
to him : — 

" Honest Tom, — God blesse thee, and protect thee, 
and mercifully lead you through the wayes of his provi- 
dence. I am much grieved you have such a cold, 
sharpe, and hard introduction, wch addes newe feares 



134 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EASTANGLIA 

unto mee for your health, whereof pray bee carefull, 
and as good an husband as possible, wch will gayne 
you credit, and make you better trusted in all affayres. 
I am sorry you went unprovided with bookes, without 
wch you cannot well spend time in those great shipps. 
If you have a globe you may easily learne the starres 
as also by bookes. ... If they have quadrants, crosse- 
staffes, and other instruments, learn the practicall use 
thereof; the names of all parts and roupes about the 
shippe, what proportion the masts must hold to the 
length and depth of a shippe, and also the sayles. I 
hope you receaved my letters from Nancy, after you 
were gone, wherein was a playne electuary agaynst the 
scurvie. . . . Forget not French and Latin, No such 
defence agaynst extreme cold, as a woollen or flannell 
wascoat next the skinne." 

A good many of Sir Thomas Browne's letters to his 
eldest son, Edward, are also preserved, some written to 
him while he was travelling abroad, others to him when 
in London, where he practised as a physician. These 
letters contain a considerable amount of such information 
as an elderly doctor would be likely to send to a 
younger one ; also occasional references to events which 
had taken place in Norwich. On November 24th, 1679, 
he wrote : — 

"Dear Sonne, The Feverish and aguish dis- 
tempers, which beganne to be common in August, are 
now very much abated, and few fall sick thereof ; only 
there are very great number of quartans; 'tis also a 
coughing time, Extraordinarie sickly seasons worrie 
physitians, and robb them of their quiet ; have therefore 
a great care of your health, and order your affayres to 
the best preservation thereof, which may bee by temper- 
ance, and sobrietie, and a good competence of sleepe. 



SIR THOMAS BROWNE AND BISHOP HALL 135 

Take heed that tobacco gayne not to much upon you, 
for the great incomodities that may ensue, and the 
bewiching qualitie of it, which draws a man to take 
more and more the longer hee hath taken it ; as also 
the ructus nidorosus, or like burnt hard eggs, and the 
hart burning after much taking at a time, and also the 
impayring of the memorie, &c." 

In August of the following year he wrote : — 

"If the profitts of the next year come not up to 
this, I would not haue you discouraged ; for the profitts 
of no practise are equal or regular : and you haue had 
some extraordinary patients this yeare, which, perhaps, 
some yeares will not afford. Now is your time to be 
frugall and lay up. I thought myself rich enough till 
my children grew up. Be carefuU of your self, and 
temperate, that you may bee able to go through your 
practise ; for to attayne to the getting of a thousand a 
yeare requires no small labour of body and mind, and is 
a life not much less paynfuU and laborious than that 
wch the meaner sort of people go through. When you 
put out your money, bee well assured of the assurance ; 
and bee wise therein from what your father hath 
suffered. It is laudable to dwell handsomely, butt bee 
not too forward to build or sett forth another man's 
howse, or so to fill it that it may increase the fuell, if 
God should please to send fire. . . . Excesse in aparell 
and chargeable dresses are got into the country, especi- 
ally among woeman ; men go decently and playn 
enough. The last assizes there was a concourse of 
woeman at that they call my lords garden in Cunsford, 
and so richly dressed that some stranger sayd there 
was scarce the like to be seen in Hide Park, which 
makes charity cold." 

Occasionally he retails local news and gossip for the 
amusement of his absent son \ as when he relates how 



136 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

his neighbour, Alderman Briggs, who was a Norwich 
burgess in Parliament, was stopped by highwaymen 
between Barton Mills and Thetford ; but not much 
money was lost, 

"passengers vsually trauelling with little money about 
them, but the coachman lost fifteen pounds which he 
caryed to buye a horse. Captaine Briggs, my neibour, 
would haue made some resistence, but they presently 
took awaye his sword which hee used to weare in parlia- 
ment : his man also was gone out of sight, and none of 
the trauellers would joyne with him to make resistence." 

About the same time he tells of the death of an old 
man who lived beyond "Schoale Inne," and who 
"wayted on the Earl of Leicester, when Queen Eliz. 
came to Norwich, and who told mee many things 
thereof." Now and again we get a bit of home-life 
chat : — 

" I am fayne to keep myself warm by a fire side this 
cold weather. . . . Here was so much sider made this 
last autumne, that there will not bee half so much 
French wine spent here as in other yeares, nor probably 
hereafter, for there is so much planting of apple trees 
and fruits, that they will become so cheap that there 
will be little profit thereby ; the last was a strange 
plentiful yeare of fruit, and my wife tells me shee 
bought above twentie quinces for a penny ; . . . Little 
Tom comes loaded from the fayre this day, and wishes 
his sister had some of them," 

No one can read, or even glance, through the 
" Vulgar Errors " without appreciating the fact that 
Sir Thomas Browne was a keen naturalist ; though in 
that particular work his main object was to disabuse 



i 



SIR THOMAS BROWNE AND BISHOP HALL 137 

the public mind of many current superstitions and 
mistaken beliefs. One day we find him occupied with 
examining a badger, to discover whether or not the 
legs on one side are shorter than those on the other ; 
another day he is experimenting with a dead king- 
fisher, to see whether or not, if hanged up by the bill, 
it will show which way the wind blows ; while a little 
later he is examining moles to see if they are blind, 
and lampreys to ascertain the number of their eyes. 
Not infrequently he appears to have explored the fens 
and marshes of Norfolk, and when there to have made 
notes of the birds he saw, and their habits. Among 
the birds in which he was specially interested was the 
bittern ; and by careful observation he satisfied himself 
that its peculiar booming note was produced neither 
by the bird putting its bill into a reed nor into mud 
or water. He mentions excursions made to Yarmouth ; 
and we know that while there he questioned the " eryngo- 
diggers " he met with among the sand-dunes as to how 
the ringed plovers arranged their eggs in the nest. In 
the dusk of summer nights he strolled along the quiet 
country roads and lanes around Norwich, pausing now 
and again to pick up glowworms, to be kept alive for 
two or three weeks on fresh turf in order that he might 
ascertain the nature of their light. One can imagine 
him providing himself with a varied assortment of pill- 
boxes, in which to preserve captured spiders, grass- 
hoppers, and fen crickets ; while Dame Dorothy Browne, 
when brushing his dusty clothes, would be wary of in- 
vestigating the contents of the pockets owing to the 
possible presence there of a forgotten toad. In his 
garden he had an aviary for the wild birds captured 



138 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OFEASTANGLIA 

and brought to him by the Norfolk wildfowlers : among 
his bird pets were bitterns (one of which he kept alive 
two years and fed with "fish, mice, and frogges"), 
shearwaters, stone curlews, and a golden eagle, though 
the last-named, he is careful to make clear to us, was 
not taken in Norfolk, but sent to him from Ireland. 
Whenever he visited the seaside — and he seems to have 
stayed at times at Yarmouth, Cromer, and on the North 
Norfolk coast — he found endless amusement in col- 
lecting shells, star-fish, jelly-fish, and curiosities from 
the nets of the 'longshore fishermen ; and, with an utter 
disregard for the olfactory sensibilities of Alderman 
Briggs and his other neighbours, he would hang up in 
his back yard a dead shark or dolphin. Far less objec- 
tionable, save in the case of weeds bearing seeds which 
the wind would distribute over adjoining gardens, was 
his custom of growing in his own garden curious plants 
he found in the course of his country rambles, which 
sometimes extended as far as the wild heaths of 
Breckland. 

That strange mixture of nonsense and fine writing, 
the " Garden of Cyrus," cannot be read without its being 
realized that the study of plants was one of Browne's 
favourite hobbies ; though it is very doubtful if any 
botanist ever extracted a grain of useful knowledge 
from the mass of herbalistic chatter contained in that 
wonderful book. Browne was a lover of gardens, and 
in Norwich there were many fine gardens to delight 
him ; but who save Browne, while he might have been 
enjoying their fragrance and beauty, would have spent 
his time in seeking, there and everywhere, " quincunxes," 
with the result that long years afterwards Coleridge, 



SIR THOMAS BROWNE AND BISHOP HALL 139 

after reading the "Garden of Cyrus," found his brain 
in such a whirl that he saw " quincunxes in heaven 
above, quincunxes in earth below, quincunxes in the 
mind of man, quincunxes in tones, in optic nerves, in 
roots of trees, in leaves, in everything." But, as Mr. 
Edmund Gosse says, this "radically bad book contains 
some of the loveliest paragraphs which passed from an 
English pen during the seventeenth century ; " and we 
can forgive the perpetration of many dismally dull 
pages for the sake of such a passage as that with which 
Browne completed the book one midnight of March, 
1658, as he sat alone, like an old astrologer, in the 
midst of the sleeping city, and saw the Hyades twinkling 
above the horizon. 

" But the quincunx of heaven runs low, and 'tis time 
to close the five ports of knowledge. We are unwilling 
to spin out our awaking thoughts into the phantasms 
of sleep, which often continueth precogitations ; making 
cables of cobwebs, and wildernesses of handsome groves. 
Besides, Hippocrates hath spoke so little, and the 
oneiro-critical masters have left such frigid interpre- 
tations from plants, that there is little encouragement 
to dream of Paradise itself. Nor will the sweetest 
delights of gardens afford much comfort in sleep ; 
wherein the dullness of that sense shakes hands with 
delectable odours ; and though in the bed of Cleopatra, 
can hardly with any delight raise up the ghost of a 
rose. Night, which Pagan theology could make the 
daughter of Chaos, affords no advantage to the de- 
scription of order ; although no lower than that mass 
can we derive its genealogy. All things began in 
order, so shall they end, and so shall they begin again ; 
according to the ordainer or order and mystical mathe- 
maticks of the city of heaven. Though Somnus in 
Homer be sent to rouse up Agamemnon, I find no 



140 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

such effects in these drowsy approaches of sleep. To 
keep our eyes open longer, were but to act our Anti- 
podes. The huntsmen are up in America, and they 
are already past their first sleep in Persia. But who 
can be drowsy at that hour which freed us from ever- 
lasting sleep ? or have slumbering thoughts at that time, 
when sleep itself must end, and as some conjecture all 
shall awake again .-' " 

Well might Coleridge pencil on the margin of his 
copy of the ** Garden of Cyrus " — 

" Think you that there ever was such a reason given 
before for going to bed at midnight ; to wit, that if we 
did not, we should be acting the part of our antipodes ! 
And then — 'The Huntsmen are up in America' — 
what life, what fancy ! Does the whimsical knight give 
us, thus, the essence of gunpowder tea, and call it an 
opiate ? " 

But our Norwich scholar and botanist was also an 
antiquary ; indeed, he might have written, as Goldsmith 
did, " I love everything that's old — old friends, old 
times, old manners, old books, old wine." One of the 
attractions his house had for visitors to Norwich was 
its collection of antiquities, to which he never lost an 
opportunity of adding any curiosity which might be 
unearthed in Norfolk. Conscientious as he was, that 
would, I fancy, have been an unlucky patient of his 
whose illness took a serious turn when the news was 
brought to Norwich that a great "find" of ancient 
burial urns had been made in a field at Old Walsing- 
ham ; for it is doubtful if the worthy doctor, in his 
anxiety to see these treasures, would not have con- 
sidered their preservation from careless injury the more 



SIR THOMAS BROWNE AND BISHOP HALL 141 

urgent " case." But his magnificent treatise on " Urn- 
Burial " is not a work to which one can turn with any 
hope of receiving archaeological enlightenment ; as 
Mr. Gosse truly says, " Browne's whole interest in these 
brown pots centred around their human associations." 
The sight of them suddenly fanned the sinking flame 
of his imagination, and, after years of literary idleness, 
it glowed again like a gorgeous pyre^ illuminating the 
darkest recesses of the tomb. By the light of it we 
see revealed the faces of Homer's heroes and old Norse 
vikings, of Roman emperors and Celtic priests ; and 
all the time the walls of the hall of death re-echo the 
music of a dirge-like march by which the sons of men 
move onward to the grave. Browne had hardly set 
down the few facts of the Walsingham discovery than 
he lost sight of them ; nor are we troubled one bit by 
his assigning the urns to a period to which they did 
not belong. What can we care for the archaeological 
accuracy of a writer who, starting with a description 
of the finding of some urns, is presently declaiming — 

" It is the heaviest stone that melancholy can throw 
at a man to tell him he is at the end of his nature ; or 
that there is no further state to come, unto which this 
seems progressional, and otherwise made in vain. With- 
out this accomplishment, the natural expectation and 
desire of such a state were but a fallacy in nature ; un- 
satisfied considerators would quarrel the justice of their 
constitutions, and rest content that Adam had fallen 
lower ; whereby, by knowing no other original, and 
deeper ignorance of themselves, they might have en- 
joyed the happiness of inferior creatures, who in tran- 
quillity possess their constitutions, as having not the 
apprehension to deplore their own natures, and, being 



142 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OFEASTANGLIA 

framed below the circumference of these hopes, or 
cognition of better being, the wisdom of God hath 
necessitated their contentment : but the superior in- 
gredient and obscured part of ourselves, whereto all 
present felicities afford no resting contentment, will be 
able at last to tell us we are more than our present 
selves, and evacuate such hopes in the fruition of their 
own accomplishments." 

Yet Browne, when so minded, could write an 
archaeological treatise as clearly and concisely as any 
modern delver into barrow, cave, or earthwork ; for 
when, some years after the discovery of the Walsingham 
urns, others were found at Brampton, near Norwich, he 
gave an account of the circumstances attending their 
discovery, which is nearly all that could be desired ; 
nor did he allow his imagination to run away with him. 

" We see him, in the mind's eye," writes Mr. Gosse, 
"standing in the wet ploughed field at Brampton, 
watching the excavation with eager eyes, and driven 
nearly to frenzy by the clumsiness of the labourers. 
The ground was soft with rain, and when the men 
used their picks, the urns were revealed, but, at first, 
'earnestly and carelessly digging, they broke all they 
met with, and finding nothing but ashes and burnt 
bones, they scattered what they found.* Nor even 
when Browne hung over them, directing their labours, 
were matters much better, for 'though I met with two 
(urns) in the side of the ditch, and used all care I could 
with the workmen, yet they were broken.' " 

Such notes as these, scattered throughout his writings, 
together with his domestic correspondence, present the 
old Norwich physician to us more clearly than his 
biographers have done, and help to reveal an attractive 



SIR THOMAS BROWNE AND BISHOP HALL 143 

personality. The life he lived after he settled down 
in Norwich was essentially provincial ; and as a doctor 
he must have been considered, in his latter years, 
" behind the times " ; but the conditions of a provincial 
life, spent in a fine old city surrounded by a country 
rich in wild life and interesting antiquities, were favour- 
able to the development of his various tastes and vivid 
imagination. One can easily believe that his whimsical 
sayings and numerous hobbies provided amusement for 
his friends and acquaintances, who would often go out 
of their way to procure for him rare birds and plants 
and other curiosities ; some of them seem to have 
looked upon him as rather eccentric. 

" In his habit of clothing," writes his friend White- 
foot, "he had an aversion to all finery, and affected 
plainness, both in the fashion and ornaments. He ever 
wore a cloke, or boots, when few others did. He 
kept himself very warm, and thought it most safe 
to do so." 

His letters prove that although he was much resorted 
to as a physician by the wealthy and distinguished folk 
of Norwich and Norfolk, he did not neglect even the 
poorest of his patients, some of whom were regularly 
relieved by himself or some member of his family. It 
might have been written of him that — 

" he was kind, and loved to sit 

In the low hut or garnish'd cottage, 
And praise the farmer's homely wit, 

And share the widow's homelier pottage : 
At his approach complaint grew mild ; 

And when his hand unbarr'd the shutter, 
The clammy lips of fever smiled 

The welcome which they could not utter." 



144 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OFEASTANGLIA 

Sir Thomas Browne died on October 19, 1682, the 
seventy-seventh anniversary of his birthday. The Rev. 
John Whitefoot tells us that — 

"in his last sickness, wherein he continued about a 
week's time, enduring great pain of the colic, besides 
a continual fever, with as much patience as has been 
seen in any man, without any pretence of stoical 
antipathy, animosity, or vanity, or not being concerned 
thereat, or suffering no impeachment of happiness. His 
patience was founded upon the Christian Philosophy, 
and a sound Faith in God's Providence, and a meek 
and humble submission thereunto which he expressed 
in a few words. I visited him near his end, when he 
had not strength to hear or speak much ; the last words 
which I heard from him were, besides some expressions 
of dearness, that he did freely submit to the will of 
God, being without fear." 

He was buried in the chancel of St. Peter Mancroft 
Church, within a very short distance of the house in 
which he had dwelt during the greater part of his life 
in Norwich. The monument to his memory was erected 
by his wife, who died about three years later. 

There is a disagreeable sequel to the story of 
Browne's life, which it is as well to summarize as briefly 
as possible, but which I would gladly omit from these 
pages if it were not for what has happened during the 
last few months. 

In the " Gentleman's Magazine " we read : — 

"In August, 1840, some workmen, who were em- 
ployed in digging a vault in the chancel of the Church 
of St. Peter Mancroft, accidentally broke with a blow 
of the pickaxe the lid of a coffin, which proved to be 
that of one whose residence within its walls conferred 



SIR THOMAS BROWNE AND BISHOP HALL 145 

honour on Norwich in olden times. . . . The bones 
of the skeleton were found to be in good preservation, 
particularly those of 'the skull. The forehead was re- 
markably low and depressed, the head unusually long, 
the back part exhibiting an uncommon appearance of 
depth and capaciousness . . . the hair profuse and 
perfect, of a fine auburn colour, similar to that in the 
portrait presented to the institute in 1847, and which 
is carefully preserved in the vestry of St. Peter Man- 
croft. . . . Instead of restoring the remains to the 
grave the Sexton dishonestly appropriated the Skull 
and hair, which he offered for sale, and they were pur- 
chased by a Dr. Lubbock, in whose collection they 
remained until the year 1847, when they were presented 
to the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital, where they are 
now to be seen. It is said that Sir Thomas Browne's 
skull is exhibited with the remains of Malefactors who 
were executed in front of Norwich Castle. There is 
a strong feeling, which every lover of Sir Thomas 
Browne will sympathize with, that these remains 
should be restored to his grave ; and it is earnestly 
hoped that the Hospital will see their way to so 
restoring them." 

At the time when the skull was stolen, the coffin- 
plate was also detached from the coffin : it is now in 
the church vestry and bears an inscription in Latin, 
of which the following is the generally accepted English 
version : — 

" A very distinguished man, Sir Thomas Browne, Kt., 
doctor of medicine, aged JJ years, who died on the 19th 
of October, 1682, sleeps in this coffin of lead. By the 
dust of his alchemic body he transmutes it into a coffer 
of gold." 

From time to time after the placing of the skull 
in the Hospital Museum, it was suggested that it 



146 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OFEASTANGLIA 

should be returned to the desecrated grave ; but no 
definite step towards accomplishing this was taken until 
April, 1906, when, as a result of the tercentenary cele- 
bration of Browne's birthday (in the course of which 
the fine statue on the Haymarket, the work of Mr. 
Henry Pegram, was unveiled by Lord Avebury), the 
Governors of the Hospital agreed to hand over the 
skull to the vicar of St. Peter Mancroft, provided that 
the coffin be reopened to ascertain whether or not it 
had really been disturbed. The announcement of this 
offer gave rise to some discussion, and a repetition of 
doubts previously expressed as to the genuineness 
of the skull, it being pointed out that its history 
after its alleged abstraction from the coffin was not 
very clear, and that the evidence upon which it had 
been accepted by the Hospital authorities was not 
such as to carry absolute conviction. In addition to 
this, the vicar and churchwardens of St. Peter Mancroft 
state that the Church cannot afford the expense of 
making research beneath the chancel (the exact posi- 
tion of the tomb being unknown), and they suggest 
that as the Hospital authorities admit that the skull 
was stolen, the Hospital should pay the cost of its 
being restored to the tomb. Of this there seems to 
be no immediate prospect, and it is probable that, 
unless some one comes forward to defray the cost of 
opening and closing the tomb, the skull will remain 
in the Hospital Museum. 

A little more than five and twenty years before 
his death, Sir Thomas Browne was in attendance at 
the death-bed of his most distinguished literary con- 
temporary in the city of Norwich, This was Bishop 



J 




STATUE OF SIR THOMAS IIKOWXK. HAVMARKET. NORWICH 



SIR THOMAS BROWNE AND BISHOP HALL 147 

Joseph Hall, the satirist, who on his release from the 
Tower of London— to which, with Archbishop Williams 
and ten other bishops, he had been committed, at the 
instigation of implacable Puritans, on a charge of high 
treason— had come to Norwich to take charge of a 
diocese noted at the time for its Puritanism. He 
arrived here in March, 1642, and was received, we are 
told, with more respect than might have been expected, 
and for about twelve months after taking possession of 
the old palace beside the Cathedral he enjoyed a peace 
to which he had been for a long time a stranger. But 
at the end of March, 1643, when the ordinance of 
sequestration was passed by the Parliament, he realised 
that there had been only a lull in the storm of civil and 
religious dissension. Early one morning, before he 
was out of bed, a London trooper with several atten- 
dants came hammering at the palace door, demanding 
entrance ; and a few days later the sequestrators came 
to seize the palace and the bishop's estate, both real 
and personal. An inventory was taken, and it was only 
with difficulty that the sequestrators were persuaded to 
omit from it the wearing apparel of the prelate and his 
family; but before his books and goods could be put 
up to auction one or two friends came forward and 
purchased them for him at a valuation. In his " Hard 
Measure" he has left us a graphic account of his 
experiences at this time, in the course of which he 
says : 

"Many insolencies and affronts were, in all this time, 
put upon us. One while a whole rabble of volunteers 
came to my gates late, when they were locked up, and 
called for the porter to give them entrance ; which not 



148 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OFEASTANGLIA 

being yielded, they threatened to make by force ; and, 
had not the said gates been very strong, they had done 
it. Others of them clambered over the walls, and 
would come into my house. Their errand, they said, 
was to search for delinquents ; what they would have 
done I know not, had not we, by a secret way, sent to 
raise the officers for our rescue. Another while the 
Sheriff Toftes and Alderman Linsey, attended with 
many zealous followers, came into my chapel to look 
for superstitious pictures and relics of idolatry ; and 
sent for me to let me know they found those windows 
full of images, which were very offensive and must be 
demolished. I told them they were the pictures of 
some ancient and worthy bishops, as St. Ambrose, 
Austin, etc. It was answered me that they were so 
many popes ; and one younger man among the rest 
(Townsend, as I perceived afterwards) would take upon 
him to defend that every diocesan bishop was pope. I 
answered him with some scorn ; and obtained leave 
that I might, with the least loss and defacing of the 
windows, give orders for taking off that offence ; which 
I did, by causing the heads of the pictures to be taken 
off, since I knew the bodies could not offend." 

How the zealous Puritans despoiled the cathedral is 
also related by the deprived bishop, who with his family 
was not long permitted to occupy the ransacked palace. 
Miles Corbet, the Puritan leader, was determined to 
eject him, and the local committee of Puritans were 
anxious to secure the use of the palace in order 
to hold their meetings there. So, although Mrs. Hall 
offered to pay the rent of the house then occupied by 
the committee, the bishop received notice to quit by 
Midsummer Day. On that day he and his family were 
rendered homeless, and, as he says, " we might have 
lain in the street for ought I know, had not the 



SIR THOMAS BROWNE AND BISHOP HALL 149 

providence of God so ordered it that a neighbour in 
the Close, one Mr. Gostlin, a widower, was content to 
void his house for us." There they appear to have 
remained until the autumn, when Hall hired a pic- 
turesque old flint and stone house still standing down 
by the riverside in suburban Heigham. In this house, 
now known as the Dolphin Inn, Hall spent the rest 
of his life, and was probably able to enjoy a more 
peaceful existence than he had known at any time since 
he was rector of the quiet Suffolk village of Hawstead, 
with no greater troubles than an atheistical neighbour 
and a parsimonious patron. For Heigham, in those 
days, was a far more rural retreat than it is to-day, 
and in his garden sloping down to the Wensum the 
ejected bishop could again turn his mind to meditations 
suggested by Nature and his beloved books. 

But he had always been a fighter, and he had not 
been long at Heigham before he again found himself 
engaged in theological strife ; he had always been a 
writer, and even in his old age his pen was rarely idle, 
though he produced nothing during his latter years in 
which we can find such entertainment as his " toothless " 
and his "biting" satires afford. As his life drew to a 
close, the death of his wife and two of his children 
caused him to turn his thoughts more and more to a 
life beyond the grave and his pen to subjects pertaining 
to " The Invisible World ; " while his sermons — for he 
still continued to preach in one or another of the city 
churches when his services were required — became more 
and more retrospective as he treated of " Life a 
Sojourning." So long as he was able, he ministered 
as faithfully in his reduced state as he had done as a 



150 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

distinguished prelate. We are told that when he was 
confined to his bed by weakness he administered the 
rite of confirmation to such as desired it, and — 

"after his prevailing infirmities had wasted all the 
strengths of nature, and the arts of his learned and 
excellent physician Dr. Browne of Norwich (to whom, 
under God, we and the whole church are ingaged for 
many years preserving his life as a blessing to us), — 
after his fatherly reception of many persons of honour, 
learning, and piety, who came to crave his dying 
prayers and benedictions, — he roused up his dying 
spirits, to a heavenly confession of his faith, which ere 
he could finish it, his speech was taken from him." 

Hall, the " English Chrysostom," as one of his 
biographers calls him, died on September 8th, 1656, 
in the eighty-second year of his age. He was buried in 
the little church of St. Bartholomew, Heigham, where, 
on the south side of the chancel, there is a rather 
gruesome monument to him, consisting, in addition to 
the inscription, of a gilt and inlaid skeleton. His 
funeral sermon was preached in the church of St. Peter 
Mancroft, by the Rev. John Whitefoot, who twenty-six 
years later delivered that of Sir Thomas Browne. The 
sermon was subsequently printed and dedicated to the 
deceased bishop's eldest son. Appended to it are some 
curious lines, which include the following : — 

" Maugre the peevish world's complaint, 
Here lies a bishop and a saint, 
Whom Ashby bred, and Granta nursed 
When Halstead (Havvsted), and Old Waltham first 
To rouz the stupid world from sloth, 
Heard thund'ring with a golden mouth ; 




a, 2 



SIR THOMAS BROWNE AND BISHOP HALL 151 

Whom Worcester next doth dignifie, 
And honoured with her deanery : 
Whom Exon lent a mitred wreath, 
And Norwich where he ceased to breathe. 

These all with one joint voice do cry, 
Death's vain attempt, what doth it mean ? 
My Son, my Pupil, Pastor, Dean, 
My rev'rend Father cannot die." 



CHAPTER IX 
LOWESTOFT 

Thomas Nash — Edward FitzGerald — His affection for fisher- 
men — His fishermen friends — Seashore lore — Professor Cowell 
and FitzGerald — Cowell visits Borrow — Joseph Fletcher (" Posh ") 
- — John FitzGerald — Edward FitzGerald at sixty — The Arnolds — 
Mrs. Opie — -Thomas Scroope— William Whiston — John Tanner — 
Robert Potter. 

PERHAPS the earliest claim Lowestoft can advance 
to have some connection with literature rests 
upon the fact of Thomas Nash, the satirist and author 
of " Pierce Pennilesse," having been born here in the 
year 1564. Whether the town has much reason to be 
proud of having been the birthplace of such a man is a 
moot point ; for Nash, we are told, spent much of his 
life in profligacy, and a considerable portion of it in 
gaol ; while some idea of the character of his writings 
may be gained from a knowledge of his having, in a 
pamphlet entitled " Christ's Tears over Jerusalem," 
expressed contrition for them shortly before he died. 
But Nash was undoubtedly, as Isaac D'Israeli has said, 
a creature of genius as well as of famine and despair ; 
and if his railings and biting satires have too much 
venom in them to commend them even to his greatest 
admirers, it must not be forgotten that his life had far 
more of the bitter than the sweet in it, and that his 

152 



LOWESTOFT 153 

work, brilliant as it often was, and received with high 
praise, brought him no tangible reward. When he 
came to write a retrospect of his literary life, he said he 
had— 

" sat up late and rose early, contended with the cold, 
and conversed with scarcitie." "All my labours," he 
added, " turned to losse, — I was despised and neglected, 
my pains not regarded, or slightly rewarded, and I 
myself, in prime of my best wit, laid open to povertie, 
. . . How many base men that wanted those parts I had, 
enjoyed content at will, and had wealth to command ? 
I called to mind a cobbler that was worth five hundred 
pounds ; an hostler that had built a goodly inn ; a 
carman in a leather pilche that had whipt a thousand 
pounds out of his horse's tail — and have I more than 
these ? thought I to myself. . . . How am I crost, or 
whence is this curse ? Even from hence, the men that 
should employ such as I am, are enamoured of their 
own wits, though they be never so scurvie ; that a 
scrivener is better paid than a scholar ; and men of art 
must seek to live among cormorants, or be kept under 
by dunces, who count it policy to keep them bare to 
follow their books the better." 

And then he breaks out : — 

" Ah worthless wit, to train me to this woe ! 
Deceitful hearts that nourish discontent ! 
Ill thrive the folly that bewitch'd me so ! 

Vain thoughts, adieu ! for now I will repent ; 
And yet my wants persuade me to proceed, 
Since none take pity of a scholar's need." 

But of Nash's life in Lowestoft we know nothing, 
though he himself wished it to be " known to all men " 
that he was born here ; so, as the town can boast of 
associations of which it has good reason to be proud, no 



154 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EASTANGLIA 

one is likely to complain if, having made this brief 
reference to the unfortunate satirist, I hasten on to 
trace along the Lowestoft shore the footprints of 
Edward FitzGerald. 

Very few years have passed since the figure of 
Edward FitzGerald was familiar to frequenters of the 
Lowestoft streets ; but during those years changes have 
taken place in " our ugly Lowestoft," as he called it, 
which he would have been the last to say are for the 
better. When he first knew it, it was far from arriving 
at the dignity of a corporation and a borough bench ; as 
its suburb, Kirkley can scarcely be said to have existed ; 
and, in the place of the Suffolk Hotel there was an 
old-fashioned hostelry on the London and Yarmouth 
coach road, with a " wooded pleasaunce " in front of it 
where ** the daffodil and the violet grew wild." This 
was in the days before the railway came ; but, as time 
went on, and the popularity of the town as a watering- 
place grew, it became less and less to his liking. Still, 
he had grown accustomed to it, and he loved the sea 
and the fishermen, and to listen to and ponder over the 
latter's quaint words and sayings. " Somehow," he 
wrote, " I always feel at home here." During his early 
visits, when he often came here by sea in his little 
yacht, the Scandal^ he was especially fond of the North 
Beach and its quaint old colony of beachmen's cottages, 
net-chambers, and curing-sheds ; there he would chat 
with the fishermen who were mending their nets, with 
the men of the beach companies — from whose sheds or 
"courts" he was watched curiously as he wandered 
along the shore — and with the twine-spinners, who, 
with the knots of hempen fibre belted to their waists, 



LOWESTOFT 155 

worked their way up and down the ancient rope- 
walks. 

His fishermen-friends were numerous, and he knew 
them all by their nicknames. In his letters they were 
" Lew " Colby, " Dickymilk " Colby, and " Old Brawtoe " ; 
and nothing pleased him much better than jotting down 
their strange nautical terms and quaint colloquialisms. 
Of these he contributed a lengthy list to " The East 
Anglian." ^ 

" Picked up idly," he says, " with little care how or 
whence they came to hand, I doubt they will make a 
sorry show in your grave pages, whether as regards 
quantity or quality. They may, however, amuse some 
of your readers, and perhaps interest others in guessing 
at their history. On the whole, I think if you print 
them, it must be in some Christmas number, a season 
when even antiquaries grow young, scholars unbend, 
and grave men are content to let others trifle. Even 
' Notes and Queries/ with all the scholars that Bruce so 
long has led, sometimes smile, sometimes doze, and 
usually gossip about what it is now the fashion to call 
Folk-lore (of which I send you some also) at Christmas. 
. . . P.S. — I add a little incidental gossip at the end, in 
order to make up one number all of a piece, if you 
think your subscribers won't drop off in consequence." 

Not the least interesting portions of this list are 
FitzGerald's disconnected notes, of which the following 
may be taken as an example : — 

" HORRYWAUR. Fifty pounds to the philologer 
who will guess this riddle without looking to the end 
for its solution. When first I knew Lowestoft, some 
forty years ago, the herring luggers (which then lay up 

1 Vol. iii. pp. 347-358. 



156 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EASTANGLIA 

on the beach, when not at sea), very many of them, 
bore testimony to Wesley's visits to the place, and his 
influence on the people. Besides the common family 
and familiar names, such as William, Sarah Jane, Two 
Friends, Brothers, and such like, there were the Ebenezer, 
Barzillai, Salem, and many more Old Testament names, 
besides the Faith, Hope, Charity, etc., from later Revela- 
tion. A few vessels bore names in profane story — such 
as the Shannon (which, by-the-bye, still reigns) after 
Sir Philip Broke's victory ; there was even a William 
Tell (no longer reigning), whose effigies, drest in an 
English sailor's white ducks and blue jacket, pointed at 
the wind with a pistol from the mast-head. That was 
about the furthest reach of legendary and historical 
lore. But now the schoolmaster has been at sea, as 
well as abroad, and gone herring-driving. Bless me ! 
there's now a * Nil Desperandum,' a ' Dum Spiro Spero,' 
and last, not least, a ' Meum and Tuum ' ; though in 
the latter case it was very properly represented to the 
owners that the phrase being Latin, should properly 
run * Meum et Tuum.' Then even the detested * Parley- 
vous ' has come into request ; and you may hear of a 
* scrunk ' of luggers very gravely enumerated in such 
order as the following. ' Let me see — there was the 
Young William, the Chanticleer, the Quee Vive (Qui 
Vive), the Saucy Polly, the Hosanna, and the Horry- 
waur.' Of the latter I could get no explanation, until 
one day it flashed upon me when I saw sailing out 
among the fleet, the ' Au Revoir,' belonging to a very 
good fellow who (according to the custom of nicknames 
hereabout) goes, as I believe his father went before him, 
under the name of ' Dicky-milk.' " 

In the days when FitzGerald came here as a change 
from the thatched cottage at Boulge, he once, at least, 
had with him his greatest friend, William Kenworthy 
Browne, whom Mr. Thomas Wright has shown to have 



LOWESTOFT 157 

been the original of Thackeray's hero in " Pendennis." 
In later years he had here the loved companionship of 
Professor Cowell, who usually stayed at a house on the 
Esplanade. There they read " Don Quixote " together ; 
but sometimes they went botanizing, a pastime Cowell 
had taken up because he had been recommended more 
walking, but in which he soon found himself greatly 
interested. Cowell was anxious to find the Roman 
nettle, which formerly grew around the fishermen's 
buildings on the North Beach ; but it had long been 
extinct when he first came here. But he found other 
rare plants, in which he rejoiced, as FitzGerald said, 
" like the great Boy he is," One day Cowell went, with 
an introduction from his friend, to see Borrow, whom 
he found to be " hard of hearing and shut up in a stuffy 
room, but cordial enough " ; it was his " Wild Wales," 
Cowell told him, that had first inspired in him a thirst 
for the Welsh language. After FitzGerald's death, 
Cowell still continued to visit Lowestoft, chiefly because 
the air proved beneficial to his ailing wife ; and in proof 
of his mind not being entirely occupied with Oriental 
literature and botany, we have the assertion of his 
niece that during one of his walks he told her the plot 
of the whole of Wilkie Collins' " Moonstone." He was 
here in September, 1892, preparing himself for the 
Oriental Congress to be held in London during the 
second week of that month ; and directly the Congress 
was over he was back again with plans for visiting 
Norwich Cathedral and Bramerton Crag Pit — archae- 
ology and field geology having been added to his 
outdoor interests. Two years later he wrote here some 
of his botanical sonnets, and one day, accompanied by 



158 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EASTANGLIA 

Dr. Venn and Dr. Dyson, one of the Law Professors at 
Oxford, he went to Southwold, afterwards walking to 
Dunwich to see the ruins of that sea-wasted town. In 
the following year he was here again, chiefly occupied 
with sonnet-writing, but finding time to pay two visits 
to the great Roman camp at Burgh Castle ; while a 
year later his best companion here was the Greville 
" Memoirs," which in his opinion only lacked humour 
to be a first-class book. Every year he did some 
botanizing, and having satisfied himself that the Roman 
nettle was really extinct, he wrote : " I daresay a 
nettle's absence was never mourned before." On the 
day after his return home from a visit to Lowestoft in 
the autumn of 1899, ^^^ ^i^^ died, and ere four years 
had elapsed he was laid beside her in the churchyard at 
Bramford, in Suffolk, near the little house in which were 
spent the first three years of their married life. 

It was in 1864 that FitzGerald made the acquaint- 
ance of Joseph Fletcher, his beloved " Posh," whom he 
described as " a man of the finest Saxon type, with a 
complexion vif, male et fiamboyant, blue eyes, a nose 
less than Roman, more than Greek, and strictly auburn 
hair that any woman might sigh to possess," and 
further, " a man of simplicity of soul, justice of thought, 
tenderness of nature, a gentleman of nature's grandest 
type." In a very short time his admiration of the 
sayings and doings of this burly fisherman had increased 
so unreasonably that nothing would convince him that 
his idol was not the "greatest man he had ever met" ; 
yet that idol had feet of clay, and Fletcher, who was 
not infrequently made to appear ridiculous by his 
admirer's jealous attentions, would be the first to admit 



LOWESTOFT 159 

that no one could have been more strangely blind to 
his failings. FitzGerald's letters will always delight 
readers for whom his personality has an appeal, and as 
time goes on, and the biographies of FitzGerald become 
more widely read, the subtle charm of those letters will 
undoubtedly captivate a wider circle of leisurely readers ; 
but if any of them are ever acknowledged to be weari- 
some, it will be those in which he sets down the 
commonplace utterances of " Posh," and finds innumer- 
able excuses for his shortcomings. The friendship 
between the two very different men must necessarily 
have been one-sided, and the space devoted to it by 
several writers who have dealt with FitzGerald's life in 
Lowestoft is largely wasted, except in that it contains 
matter which goes a long way towards proving his own 
assertion that " we FitzGeralds are all mad." Of both 
FitzGerald and Borrow it may be said that their objec- 
tions to ordinary conventionalities were so great that 
to escape having to conform to those conventionalities 
they often sought the companionship of rough and 
simple souls, and, perhaps unconsciously, excused the 
indulgence of their own weaknesses and foibles by 
exaggerating the good qualities and homely wisdom of 
their humble friends. But although both FitzGerald 
and Borrow were so similarly disposed to enjoy the 
luxury of a "simple life," they never became friends 
nor sought each other's company. Had they done so, 
each might have had his eyes opened a little wider, and 
have been the better for it. 

During his visits to Lowestoft, FitzGerald nearly 
always stayed at one or another of the two southernmost 
houses (Nos. ii and 12) of Marine Terrace, a row 



160 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

standing a little way back from the east side of London 
Road ; but one associates him with the cliffs — on which 
Henry Irving (whom FitzGerald did not admire) after- 
wards studied his part in Ravenstvood — the beach, the 
harbour jetties, and the fishermen's quarters rather than 
with the lodging-houses at which he stayed. He loved 
the sea, and was never happier than when on or beside 
it ; but he hated the " respectable " South Lowestoft, 
and it was only when Cowell or some other friend was 
staying there that he could be persuaded to cross the 
harbour bridge. On the rare occasions when he wandered 
beyond the bounds of the town, it was to Yarmouth or 
one of the neighbouring coast villages, and usually he 
took Fletcher with him, for it pleased him to hear his 
fisherman-friend discourse, and especially argue, with 
other salt-water folk. All his life FitzGerald preferred 
the outside of a church to the inside ; but this did not 
prevent his frequently attending the old " Bethel " in 
Commercial Road, where the fishermen's missionary, 
Mr. William Johnson — still well remembered for his 
good work and sympathetic heart — kept the wooden 
benches " well filled with sailors in their guernseys, who 
chewed tobacco during prayers and even kept quids in 
their cheeks whilst they sang." Sometimes FitzGerald's 
eccentric brother John preached in the Bethel ; but on 
these occasions Edward was invariably absent. As one 
of his intimate friends said, "He was rather hard on 
parsons," and he reckoned his brother among them. 

FitzGerald could constantly find a source of amuse- 
ment in the eccentricities of his brother John, as well as 
in those of other friends and acquaintances ; but his own 
were equally marked ; indeed, so strange was his 



LOWESTOFT 161 

behaviour at times, especially in the days when " Posh " 
was his idol, that strangers sometimes looked upon him 
as a madman and " Posh " as his keeper. But for all 
that his was so attractive and loveable a nature that 
even the commonplace terrace in which he lived whilst 
at Lowestoft seems to those who knew him, and those 
who love him without having known him, worth a 
pilgrimage to see. As one follows in his steps through 
the little-changed streets of the beachmen's quarter, or 
along the Denes, where the fishermen still dry their nets, 
one feels that he has conferred an enviable distinction 
on the town, and that the fact of his having chosen to 
spend so much of his time here should always be among 
its cherished memories. A pen-portrait of him as he 
was at sixty has been drawn by Mr. Thomas Wright — 

'' FitzGerald was above the medium height, but at 
sixty, though still robust and nimble, had begun to 
stoop. His face, bronzed by exposure to sun and sea 
air, had a melancholy, pensive, or dreamy cast ; he had 
pale blue eyes, bushy brows, a large nose, a deep upper 
lip, a firmly closed mouth, and a dimple in the chin. 
Save for a fringe of grey hair above the ears he was 
bald, and ' like all the FitzGeralds,' he * wagged his head 
as he walked.' His appearance, as ever, was very 
slovenly. Abroad he wore a time-beaten tall hat, 
carried on the back of his head, a carelessly tied black 
scarf round his neck, and in cold weather a large green 
and black plaid shawl, which often trailed on the 
ground." 

The wraith of that pensive figure still seems to haunt 
the Lowestoft shore. 

Before visiting Oulton, where George Borrow lived 
and died, we must briefly touch upon a few other literary 

M 



162 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

associations of the easternmost town in England. There 
is a large old red-brick house — now a boarding-house — 
near the top of High Street, which has some claim on 
our attention, for it was for a long time the home of a 
branch of the family to which belonged a famous Master 
of Rugby and his more famous son, Matthew Arnold ; 
but the most distinguished of the Lowestoft Arnolds 
was a fighting sea-captain, who captured a Spanish flag- 
ship and brought home its flag, which many people still 
living in the town can remember to have seen flying 
from a window of the High Street house. A little way 
beyond this house, at the foot of the old cliff-slope 
beyond the High Lighthouse, in a small but pretty 
public garden called the Sparrow's Nest, stands the old 
home of the Aldersons, a family to which belonged Mrs. 
Opie, the novelist, and a Miss Alderson who became 
the wife of the late Marquis of Salisbury. Mrs. Opie, 
whose grandfather was a minister here, occasionally 
stayed in the town, and was here a short time before 
her death ; but she belonged to the distinguished literary 
and artistic circle which flourished in Norwich in the 
early years of the last century rather than to Lowestoft. 
As we ramble out of Lowestoft towards the haunts 
of George Borrow, the parish church attracts attention 
more by its position than by anything remarkable in 
itself; for it stands some distance from the town, and 
on the highest ground in the neighbourhood. It is 
worth while to turn aside from the Oulton road for a 
while and visit the church, for it is not without such 
associations as we are seeking, one of which carries us 
back as far as the fifteenth century. In the chancel 
was interred Thomas Scroope, Bishop of Dromore, who 



LOAVESTOFT 163 

died at Lowestoft in 1491 ; formerly there was a brass 
to his memory, but it has long disappeared. This 
ancient worthy, who was for a time vicar of the parish, 
is said to have been a member of the ancient Yorkshire 
family of Scroope, and in the course of his life he was 
connected with no less than three monastic orders, being 
first a Benedictine, then a Dominican, and finally a 
Carmelite of Norwich. According to Fuller, he wrote, 
while at Norwich, a learned treatise on the order he 
finally adhered to, and also preached in various parts of 
the neighbourhood, " clothed in hair and sackcloth, and 
girt with an iron chain." Then he retired to a cell in 
his monastery and became a recluse for twenty years ; 
at the end of which time he was made Bishop of 
Dromore and sent by Pope Eugenius on an embassy to 
the Isle of Rhodes. Of his journey thither he wrote a 
lengthy account. On returning to Ireland he gave up 
his bishopric and came to Lowestoft, where he died at 
the age of nearly a hundred years. 

Rather more than two centuries later there was 
instituted to the vicarage of Lowestoft a more cele- 
brated man in William Whiston, who four years later 
succeeded Sir Isaac Newton in his professorship at 
Cambridge. Whiston is best known as the author of 
" Primitive Christianity Revived " ; but he was a 
voluminous writer on ecclesiastical history, mathematics, 
astronomy, and mysticism. Sir Leslie Stephen writes 
of him as a man of "very acute but ill-balanced 
intellect," whose "learning was very great, however 
fanciful his theories," and compares him with the 
Vicar of Wakefield, "who adopted his principles of 
monogamy." He was a strenuous participator in 



164 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

religious strife, with the result that he was expelled 
from his University and the Church for Arianism ; he 
mixed with the leading men of his time, and many tales, 
some of doubtful authenticity, are told of him. When 
Prince Eugene came to London, Whiston printed a 
new dedication to his essay on the Apocalypse, and 
pointed out that the prince had fulfilled some of the 
prophecies. In acknowledging this, the prince remarked 
that he had not been aware that he " had the honour of 
being known to St. John," but at the same time he sent 
Whiston fifteen guineas. Once, when he was in the 
company of Walpole, Pope, Addison, Craggs and others, 
the conversation turned on the possibility of a secretary 
of state being an honest man; After some pressing, 
Whiston gave it as his opinion that it would be to the 
advantage of a statesman to speak openly what he 
knew and to declare his intentions without disguise. 
Craggs remarked that " It might answer for a fortnight, 
but would not do for a month," to which Whiston 
returned, "Did you ever, Mr. Secretary, try it for a 
fortnight?" 

A subsequent vicar was John Tanner, who com- 
pleted and published while at Lowestoft the "Notitia 
Monastica" of his brother Thomas, Bishop of St. 
Asaph. He died in December, 1759 ; but less than 
thirty years had elapsed before the vicarage of 
Lowestoft was filled by another and more famous 
scholar in Robert Potter, whose translation of ^schylus 
was described by Beattie as " the best translation that 
ever appeared in English of any Greek poet." Potter, 
who is said to have been " a tall man, about six feet 
high, very handsome, and with an aquiline nose," and a 



LOWESTOFT 165 

man of " great merit, small preferment, and large 
family," died at Lowestoft in 1804, and a tomb erected 
to his memory was formerly to be seen outside the north 
side of the church chancel, but its site is now occupied 
by the priests' vestry. His translation of -^schylus is 
still considered the best, and is included in Mr. Morley's 
Universal Library and Lord Avebury's Hundred Best 
Books. Soon after his death an obituary notice 
appeared, in which it was stated that — 

" Mr. Potter has long been known to the literary 
world as the translator of the three great writers 
^schylus, Sophocles, and Euripides) of the Greek 
Drama : of all the translations in our language, this 
undoubtedly possesses a superior claim to excellence ; 
not merely from the felicity with which it has been 
executed, but from the singular fidelity by which the 
genius and manner of the respective writers are pre- 
sented to us. When we further consider the magnitude 
of the undertaking, and that it was the work of one man, 
we cannot but rank Mr. Potter — not to mention his 
original publications — among those to whom British 
literature is especially indebted." 



CHAPTER X 
GEORGE BORROW AT OULTON 

Normanston Manor House — Frederick Denison Maurice — 
Tennyson's verses to Maurice — Crabbe at Normanston — John 
Wesley — -Oulton Broad — Sorrow's Oulton home — The Skeppars 
— Borrow's marriage with Mary Clarke — Life at Oulton Cottage 
—"The Zincali"— "The Bible in Spain " — " Lavengro "— 
Borrow and his critics — Borrow wishes to be a magistrate — 
His dispute with the rector of Oulton—" Epistolary pyrotechnics " 
— " Mr. Flamson " — Death of Borrow's mother — Borrow removes 
to London — Returns to Oulton — Correspondence with FitzGerald 
— Borrow's irritability — " Tells his age to no man ! " — His death — 
His summer-house by the Broad — Isopel Earners — Oulton Church 
—Mrs. McOubrey. 

ON leaving the churchyard — which was often visited 
by FitzGerald when in his more melancholy 
moods — the Beccles road, which runs beside the newer 
cemetery and crosses the Lowestoft and Gorleston 
railway, soon brings us to the old Normanston manor- 
house, which stands near the end of a by-road called 
Fir Lane and a small piece of waste ground, formerly a 
camping ground of the roving Romanies, The house is 
a fairly old one of well-weathered red brick, but a wall 
hides most of it from a foot-traveller along the road, and 
it can be seen best from a footpath between Lowestoft 
and Oulton Broad by way of Lake Lothing. This house 
should interest us as being the birthplace, in 1805, of 

166 



GEORGE BORROW AT OULTON 167 

Frederick Denison Maurice, the " Christian Sociah'st," 
and friend of Tennyson, Carlyle, and Charles Kingsley. 
Only a few years of his boyhood were spent here, and 
the biography written by his son has little to say about 
his Normanston home ; but when he went to Cambridge 
he soon distinguished himself as an " intellectual leader 
among his ablest contemporaries," and in later years, 
when his championship of the cause of the Chartists and 
Radicals led him into trouble, and caused him to be 
charged with " atheism and immoral revolutionary 
doctrines," the support and sympathy he received from 
some of the greatest men of his time were a sufficient 
testimony to his sterling worth and honesty. Sir Leslie 
Stephen has written of him — 

" His catholic interest in all religious beliefs, and 
sympathetic appreciation of their value, seemed to imply 
an excessive intellectual ingenuity in reconciling apparent 
contradictions. The effort to avoid a harsh dogmatic 
outline gives an indistinctness to his style, if not his 
thought, and explains why some people held him, 
as he says himself, to be a * muddy mystic' . . . But 
no fair reader can doubt that he was a man of most 
generous nature, of wide sympathies, and of great 
insight and subtilty of thought, and possessed a wide 
learning." 

FitzGerald, who once heard him preach, said of him, 
" Maurice seems to say in his demeanour, ' You may 
trample on my body, I lay it on the road for you to 
walk over ; ' " but while he was always ready to sacrifice 
himself, he would never abandon the path he believed 
to be the right one. His early experiences as a writer 
and editor were not encouraging, though he was hopeful 



168 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

enough to believe that a novel ^ he was writing would 
bring him in money enough to pay his expenses when 
he took orders and went to Oxford ; but his " Sketches 
of Contemporary Authors" were among the earliest 
important articles contributed to the "Athenseum." 
Tennyson was one of his greatest admirers, and when 
Maurice was compelled to resign his professorship of 
English Literature and History at King's College, 
London, he received from the poet the invitation con- 
tained in those charming verses — 

" Come, when no graver cares employ, 
Godfather, come and see your boy : 

Your presence will be sun in winter. 
Making the little one leap for joy. 

" For, being of that honest few, 
Who give the Fiend himself his due. 

Should eighty-thousand college councils 
Thunder ' Anathema,' friend, at you ; 



^ The title of this novel is " Eustace Conway." A capable 
critic spoke of it with " very high and almost unmingled 
admiration," but a candid friend of the author said to him, " Why, 
Maurice, how on earth did you ever come to write such a thing 
as this ? Why, there is not a man in the whole book that I 
shouldn't like to have the hanging of." If there be any justifi- 
cation for this latter criticism, it is hardly surprising that Captain 
Marryat, the novelist, should have been much annoyed at finding 
that one of the characters, who was represented in a way by no 
means flattering to him, bore his own name. As the novel was 
issued anonymously, Captain Marryat called on its publisher, 
Mr. Richard Bentley, and " full of ire," made him pledge his 
word to write to the author and ask him whether he (the gallant 
captain) was referred to or the use of his name was purely 
accidental. 



GEORGE BORROW AT OULTON 169 

" Should all our churchmen foam in spite 
At you, so careful of the right, 

Yet one lay-hearth would give you welcome 
(Take it and come) to the Isle of Wight. 

" Where, far from noise and smoke of town 
I watch the twilight falling brown 

All round a careless-order'd garden 
Close to the ridge of a noble down. 

" Come, Maurice, come : the lawn as yet 
Is hoar with rime, or spongy-wet ; 

But when the wreath of March has blossom'd, 
Crocus, anemone, violet, 

'■ Or later, pay one visit here. 
For those are few we hold as dear ; 

Nor pay but one, but come for many, 
Many and many a happy year." 

Before taking leave of Normanston, it must not be 
forgotten that the old house is also associated with the 
poet Crabbe. 

In the year 1790, Crabbe, who was then residing at 
Muston, paid a lengthy visit to his native county, 
spending some time at Parham, and then going on to 
Beccles to stay for a while with Mrs. Elmy, his wife's 
mother. He was accompanied by his wife and family, 
and his son and biographer tells us that from Beccles 
they proceeded to 

" a sweet little villa called Normanston, another of the 
early resorts of my mother and her lover, in the days of 
their anxious affection. Here four or five spinsters of 
independent fortune had formed a sort of Protestant 
nunnery, the abbess being Miss Blacknell, who after- 
wards deserted it to become the wife of the late Admiral 
Sir Thomas Graves. . . . Another of the sisterhood was 



170 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

Miss Waldron, late of Tamworth, — dear, good-humoured, 
hearty, masculine Miss Waldron, who could sing a jovial 
song like a fox-hunter, and like him I had almost said 
toss a glass ; and yet there was such an air of high ton, 
and such intellect mingled with these manners, that the 
perfect lady was not veiled for a moment, — no, not when, 
with a face rosy red, and an eye beaming with mirth, 
she would seize a cup and sing ' Toby Fillpot,' glorying 
as it were in her own jollity. When we took our morning 
rides, she generally drove my father in her phaeton, and 
interested him exceedingly by her strong understanding 
and conversational powers." 

While at Normanston, the Rev. George Crabbe made 
frequent driving excursions in company with these in- 
teresting ladies, generally in the direction of Lowestoft, 
where, one evening, they all went to hear John Wesley 
preach. Wesley by that time was old and infirm, and 
had to be attended, and almost supported, in the pulpit 
by a young minister on each side of him. In the course 
of his sermon he repeated the following familiar lines 
from Anacreon, to which he gave an application of 
his own — 

" Oft am I by women told, 

Poor Anacreon ! thou grow'st old ; 

See, thine hairs are falling all. 

Poor Anacreon ! how they fall ! 

Whether I grow old or no, 

By these signs I do not know ; 

But this I need not to be told 

'Tis time to live if I grow old." 

" My father," writes Crabbe's son, " was much struck 
by his reverend appearance and his cheerful air, and the 
beautiful cadence he gave to these lines ; and, after the 
service, introduced himself to the patriarch, who received 
him with benevolent politeness." 



GEORGE BORROW AT OULTON 171 

Before leaving Normanston, Crabbe wrote some 
verses for the fascinating ladies who had their home 
here, and called them " The Ladies of the Lake." 

Within a few minutes' walk of Normanston areOulton 
Broad station and the by-road leading to Oulton Church 
and the site of Borrow's home beside the Broad. He 
would hardly recognize the road now, so changed is it 
from the quiet winding lane he knew ; on one side it is 
bordered by a building estate which is rapidly being 
covered with commonplace cottages, while towards the 
once-beautiful Broad the view is spoiled by huge and 
unsightly malthouses. Nor is the evidence of Oulton 
having become an urban district entirely absent until 
the upland edge is reached and the marshlands are seen 
stretching away down the Waveney Valley in all their 
pristine spaciousness and soothing monotony. But 
before the marshes come into view, there is one short 
stretch of by-road still bordered by its old tall trees, and 
it is just where this stretch begins that a new road 
branches off, taking the place of the rough pathway 
which led to Borrow's home. The new road leads to a 
colony of modern houses and villas, nearly all of which 
have been built since Borrow died, and one of which, 
just beyond the railway bridge, stands on the site of 
that Oulton Cottage in which he lived from 1840 to 
1853, and to which he returned in 1874, to spend his 
declining years in almost complete seclusion. 

How it was that Borrow came to live here is fully 
explained by Dr. Knapp in his biography. He appears 
to have made the acquaintance of Mr. Edmund Skeppar, 
who lived at Oulton Hall, about the year 1832, in which 
year he was at Lowestoft as the guest of the Rev. 



172 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

Francis Cunningham, who had married one of the 
Gurneys, a sister of the celebrated Elizabeth Fry. At 
that time Mr. Skeppar had been in occupation of the 
Hall since 1805, and his daughter, Mary Clarke, who 
had been left a widow after a married life of only eight 
months, was, with her little daughter, Henrietta Mary — 
the "Henrietta" of "Wild Wales "—living with him. 
Mary Clarke and Borrow seem to have been attracted 
by each other, and when he went to Russia in the 
following year they commenced a regular correspondence. 
On his return to England, in 1835, he again visited 
Oulton ; but soon after, at the request of the Bible 
Society, started for Spain and Portugal, with the object 
of making inquiries " respecting the means and channels 
which may offer for promoting the circulation of the 
Holy Scriptures." In 1838 he paid a brief visit to 
England, and was probably at Oulton again ; but his 
next meeting with Mrs. Clarke and her daughter took 
place, whether by arrangement or " the manipulation of 
the invisible threads of human destiny," Dr. Knapp 
cannot decide, at Seville. The parents of Mrs. Clarke 
were by this time dead, and Dr. Knapp more than hints 
that she was tired of widowhood and determined to 
claim Borrow as her own. 

" The Estate," the biographer writes, " demanded a 
living man of certain herculean proportions and a fierce 
countenance, to keep the foe at bay. Such a man was 
'six-foot-three.' He was an athlete still. His Bible 
Society training had rendered him even more formidable. 
She had known him and helped him in the dark days of 
1832, and since then she had kept a kindly eye on him. 
She had followed him to Gibraltar that she might be the 
first to welcome him back to Europe, or, lest he should 



GEORGE BORROW AT OULTON 173 

fall into the sea, and become a derelict for ships passing 
the Straits between Calpe and Abyla. It was all very 
kind, very kind ; but Don Jorge was not a family man. 
He had allowed Isopel to depart for America, where 
there is room and bread for the active and the strong. 
He came nearer to invading his principles then, than 
had ever been the case before or since." 

But in November, 1839, the die was cast. "At this 
time," wrote Arthur Dalrymple, one of Borrow's Norwich 
schoolfellows, "the widow . . . found him out, having 
travelled over half Europe in search of him, and took 
possession of him." The marriage took place at St. 
Peter's Church, Cornhill, on April 23rd, 1840, and early 
in the following month, Borrow, with his wife and step- 
daughter, took up their residence at Oulton. 

Oulton Cottage was then a small isolated house 
standing close by the waterside, from which it was 
separated by a sloping lawn ; it was well sheltered by 
trees, among them some rugged firs which the storms 
have not yet destroyed. The house consisted of a room 
on each side of the entrance, a kitchen, four bedrooms 
and two attics ; but there was a large octagonal summer- 
house in the garden and into this Borrow removed his 
books and made it his study. There he finished his 
first original book, " The Zincali : An Account of the 
Gypsies of Spain." Any value this dull book may have 
once possessed has long been heavily discounted by the 
publication of fuller and more accurate works, and if 
nothing better had ever proceeded from the picturesque 
little summer-house beside Oulton Broad, Borrow would 
by now be forgotten and the summer-house demolished. 
But he had scarcely seen " The Zincali " through the 
press, when he began to write " The Bible in Spain." 



174 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

" At first," he says, " I proceeded slowly, — sickness 
was in the land, and the face of nature was overcast — 
heavy rain-clouds swam in the heavens, — the blast 
howled amid the pines which nearly surround my lonely 
dwelling, and the waters of the lake which lies before 
it, so quiet in general and tranquil, were fearfully 

agitated A dreary summer and autumn passed 

by, and were succeeded by as gloomy a winter. I still 
proceeded with the Bible in Spain. The winter passed, 
and spring came with cold dry winds and occasional 
sunshine, whereupon I rose, shouted, and mounting my 
horse, even Sidi Habismilk, I scoured all the surround- 
ing district, and thought but little of the Bible in Spain. 
So I rode about the country, over the heaths, and 
through the green lanes of my native land, occasionally 
visiting friends at a distance, and sometimes, for 
variety's sake, I staid at home and amused myself by 
catching huge pike, which lie perdue in certain deep 
ponds skirted with lofty reeds, upon my land, and to 
which there is a communication from the lagoon by a 
deep and narrow watercourse. — I had almost forgotten 
the Bible in Spain. Then came the summer with 
much heat and sunshine, and then I would lie for hours 
in the sun and recall the sunny days I had spent in 
Andalusia, and my thoughts were continually reverting 
to Spain, and at last I remembered that the Bible in 
Spain was still unfinished ; whereupon I arose and 
said : This loitering profiteth nothing, — and I hastened 
to my summer-house by the side of the lake, and there 
I thought and wrote, and every day I repaired to the 
same place, and thought and wrote until I had finished 
the Bible in Spain." 

" The Bible in Spain " had a cordial reception ; but 
such was not the case with his next book, the delightful 
" Lavengro," which, notwithstanding that a good critic 
(Dr. Gordon Hake) said at once of it that its " roots 




GEORGE KORROW'S SUMMER-HOUSE AT OULTOX 



GEORGE BORROW AT OULTON 175 

will strike deep into the soil of English letters," hardly 
pleased more than that one reviewer. How Borrow 
dealt with his critics everyone knows who has read the 
Appendix to " The Romany Rye," where, in his plea- 
sant little way, he holds " them up by their tails " and 
shows " the creatures wriggling, blood and foam stream- 
ing from their broken jaws." But while professing to 
disdain these " creatures," no one was more sensitive to 
criticism than Borrow — nothing, indeed, angered him 
more than being found fault with in any way, and it 
is his petty, almost childish, resentment of his critics' 
fault-finding which makes us treat that splenetic 
Appendix as though it were the squealing of a bad- 
tempered child. His diatribes against his " pseudo- 
critics," as he calls them, simply amuse us, and there 
was probably never a time when they did worse 
than cause a smile, and perhaps a roar of laughter, 
even where they were intended to inflict a painful 
wound. 

For a man whose chief ambition whilst at Oulton 
seems to have been to become a magistrate so that he 
could adjudicate upon the delinquencies of his neighbours, 
Borrow certainly showed little evidence of possessing 
such a cool judgment as would commend him to the 
Lord Lieutenant of the county, and it is scarcely sur- 
prising that, notwithstanding all his efforts to secure the 
dignity of a Justice of the Peace, he was never per- 
mitted to adorn the local bench. So irritable was his 
disposition that FitzGerald once said of himself — or it 
was said of him — that he was the only friend Borrow 
had not at some time quarrelled with ; and how trivial 
were some of the causes of his quarrels may be judged 



176 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

from the facts of his dispute with the rector of Oulton 
about the frequent fights between their respective dogs, 
though in this instance the rector was far from showing 
a Christian disposition to be smitten on both cheeks. 
Threats of an appeal to the magistrates and a complaint 
to the Bishop were launched by the indignant Borrow 
against his clerical antagonist ; but the warmth of the 
dispute did nothing worse than kindle what Dr. Knapp 
aptly calls " espistolary pyrotechnics." Borrow, in 
acknowledging a note from the rector, regretted that 
circumstances over which he had no control would 
occasionally bring him under the same roof with Mr. 
Denniss ; " that roof, however," was " the roof of the 
House of God, and the prayers of the Church of 
England " were " wholesome from whatever mouth " 
they proceeded. A few days later, in a letter to his 
publisher, Mr. Murray, Borrow complained that he had 
been dreadfully unwell since he last heard from him ; 
he had had, indeed, " a regular nervous attack ! " Lady 
Eastlake,'who met Borrow not long after this, described 
him as " a kind of character that would be most 
dangerous in rebellious times, one that would suffer or 
persecute to the uttermost " ; but Lady Eastlake was 
probably mistaken. Borrow's bark was always worse 
than his bite ; he was good-natured but bad-tempered, 
and always had a somewhat exaggerated idea of his 
own importance. 

If he thought he had been injured in any way, he 
would pillory in print those whom he thought had 
wronged him, as witness his diatribe against "Mr. 
Flamson," in whom his biographer identifies the railway 
contractor who came to Lowestoft to improve the 



GEORGE BORROW AT OULTON 177 

harbour and construct a railway which happened to 
cross Sorrow's estate. Not content with writing of this 
unfortunate man as though he were a monster glutting 
himself with the blood and enriching himself with the 
hard-earned money of the poor, he goes so far as to 
heap insults upon his wife, and again betrays his childish 
temper by scoffing at the style of the house, a " pande- 
monium in red brick," the contractor had built in the 
neighbourhood. In Oulton curious tales are still told of 
his vagaries — of his treatment of people who purposely 
or unwittingly trespassed upon his land or otherwise 
offended him ; of his antics around a bonfire of pirated 
copies of his works ; of his frightening children by 
glaring at them when he encountered them in his walks 
abroad ; and of his chasing, on horseback, some boys 
who had called after him some uncomplimentary name. 
To some of the poor folk of the parish he not in- 
frequently showed kindness, but of the majority of his 
poorer neighbours he seems to have had a bad opinion. 
According to his own account, he was three times 
attacked at night whilst returning home from Lowestoft, 
and once was shot at and nearly overpowered by 
ruffians ; but these attacks, which curiously enough 
happened just about the time when he was desirous of 
being made a magistrate, and of which there appears to 
be no contemporary record save his own, were probably 
nothing worse than the raids of one or two poachers on 
his plantations. Of his Lowestoft neighbours he had 
an equally poor opinion. " Mind whom you trust in 
Lowestoft," he wrote to Mr. Murray, taking care to 
underline the words. 

As an instance of Sorrow's notorious brusqueness, 

N 



178 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

Mr. W. Willmot Dixon has recently told the following 
anecdote ^ : 

" The coachman of Doctor Ray, of Lowestoft, had, 
in driving round a corner sharply, almost grazed the 
flank of the horse Borrow was riding — his favourite Sidi 
Habismilk. Borrow was furious, went straight to the 
doctor's house, rang the bell, and when the servant 
opened the door, to her astonishment and horror, with- 
out dismounting, he rode his horse into the hall, calling 
in stentorian tones for the doctor. When the latter 
appeared Borrow thundered out : ' Where is that 
scoundrel coachman of yours, sir ? Do you know what 
he has done, sir ? ' ' Mr. Borrow,' said the doctor, 
quietly, but firmly, 'if you will be good enough to 
remove your horse from my hall and speak like a 
gentleman I shall be happy to attend to what you have 
to say.' I suppose Borrow felt that his conduct was 
outrageous, for he backed his horse out of the hall and 
went away without another word." 

From 1853 to i860, Borrow had his headquarters in 
Yarmouth, but spent much of his time in wandering 
about the country and paying visits to Cornwall, his 
father's native county, Wales, and the Isle of Man. In 
1858, his mother, who about nine years before had 
removed from Norwich to Oulton, died, and was buried 
in Oulton churchyard. Two years later Borrow removed 
to London, where, save for journeys into Scotland and 
Ireland, he spent most of his time until 1874, when he 
returned to Oulton, as he said, to die. Apart from pay- 
ing an occasional visit to Norwich, he now chose to live 
the life of a recluse. Once he sent an invitation to 
Edward FitzGerald to come and see him ; but by that 

1 In T. P.'s Weekly, August 7th, 1903. 



GEORGE BORROW AT OULTON 179 

time the doors leading to most of FitzGerald's old 
haunts had been closed to htm by the death of friends, 
and he was not to be persuaded to visit Oulton again. 
But in reply to the invitation he wrote : 

" I think the more of it because I imagine from what 
I have heard that you have slunk away from human 
company as much — as I have ! . . . Are you not glad 
now to be mainly alone, and find company a heavier 
burden than the grasshopper? If one ever had this 
solitary habit, it is not likely to alter for the better as 
one grows older — as one grows old. . . . Perhaps we 
should not like one another so well after a fifteen years' 
separation, when all of us change and most of us for the 
worse. I do not say that would be your case ; but you 
must, at any rate, be less inclined to disturb the settled 
repose into which you, I suppose, have fallen." 

And if few old friends or new acquaintances cared to 
call on Borrow it is hardly surprising ; for those who did 
so could never be sure of a friendly reception. His 
irritability was still frequently manifested, and both 
friends and business folk found him difficult to talk to 
and deal with. One of his latest visitors, the rector of 
Lowestoft, happened to ask him how old he was, and he 
at once became very angry and exclaimed, " Sir, I tell 
my age to no man ! " Then, in high dudgeon, he retired 
to his summer-house and wrote, in a very shaky hand, 
his last composition, which began with : " Never talk to 
people about their age." In 1879 he was unable to 
walk as far as the boundary of his small estate ; in 
December, 1880, feeling that the end was not far off, he 
made his Will ; and on the 26th July, 1881, he died. 
He was not buried at Oulton, but in Brompton 



180 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

Cemetery, London, where, in compliance with his own 
instructions, he was interred beside his wife. 

Oulton Cottage, his home beside the Broad, was 
pulled down not long after his death ; but the ivy-clad 
summer-house in which " The Bible in Spain " was pre- 
pared for the press and " Lavengro " was written can 
still be seen by cruisers on the Broad, and over- 
shadowing it are the same dark pines amid which the 
wind made mournful music while he sat in his lonely 
retreat and dreamt and wrote of his wandering life and 
the days he had spent in Sunny Spain. Here he was 
visited for the last time by Jasper Petulengro, his famous 
gipsy friend, whose acquaintance he had made many 
years before in the green lane near Norman Cross, and 
whose Romany friends, until a few years ago, frequently 
camped on the neighbouring building estate or the tract 
of waste ground bordering Fir Lane. With the gipsies 
Borrow appears to have always been on good terms, and 
who can doubt that in his latter years, when he had 
abandoned the road and free and careless foot-faring, 
his thoughts often went back to those days of aimless 
roving, when he had a part, and enjoyed to the full, the 
" romance of the road " ? Who can wonder that among 
the practical and common-place folk with whom he cast 
in his lot when he settled down at Oulton he felt him- 
self to be too angular to conform comfortably with their 
smooth and characterless self-complacency, and so grew 
discontented and irritable ? Who can say what ghosts 
may not have haunted that little summer-house in the 
dusk of summer nights ? Perhaps, out of the shadow of 
the distant Dingle the form of Isopel Berners may have 
emerged, and he may have heard her breathe again the 



GEORGE BORROW AT OULTON 181 

words ** Our ways lie different," and have asked himself 
why it should have been so. And in the silence of the 
night may he not have bitterly regretted a day when he 
was blinded by youthful confidence and pride? 

For it was pride and a too tender regard for what 
the world might say of him that prevented his throwing 
in his lot entirely with the roving folk who had so great 
a fascination for him. One who knew him as well as 
any one ever did, has told us that he was too proud 
ever to have married such a girl as Isopel, no matter 
how much he might be attracted by her ; while Dr. 
Gordon Hake, who often met him during the Oulton 
days, says of him : — 

" His temper was good and bad ; his pride was 
humility ; his humility was pride ; his vanity, in being 
negative, was of the most positive kind. He was 
reticent and candid, measured in speech, with an 
emphasis that made trifles significant. Borrow was 
essentially hypochondriacal. Society he loved and hated 
alike. He loved it that he might be pointed out and 
talked of ; he hated it because he was not the prince 
that he felt himself in its midst." 

He was, in fact, one of the most self-conscious of 
men, and like a good many other self-conscious men, he 
tried to conceal his uneasiness when in cultured company, 
either by a loud self-assertiveness or a discourteous 
refusal to admit as worthy of consideration the opinions 
of such people as presumed to differ from him. 

On the north side of the railway that runs through 
the estate which once belonged to Borrow, and not far 
from the gate of the garden in which the old summer- 
house and the fir trees are all that remain to remind us 



182 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EASTANGLIA 

of him, a field footpath skirts the grounds of Oulton 
Hall, the old home of the Skeppars, and leads directly 
to the parish church. On the way thither one gets 
glimpses of the wide marshland scenery in which 
Borrow so delighted, and with which all other scenery 
was, in his opinion, not worthy of comparison. The 
church, which stands on the summit of an upland slope 
leading down to the marsh level, has been much 
restored and modernized ; but it still retains portions 
of an original Norman building in its chancel arch — 
which is one of the arches of a central tower — and its 
south doorway. Formerly the church had some fine 
brasses, but these mysteriously disappeared a good 
many years ago : some say they were stolen and 
thrown into the Broad, while others have heard rumours 
that they now adorn an American modern " baronial 
hall." At the present time the only brass in the church 
is a label, let into the floor near the chancel arch, to the 
memory of William Bedingfeld, who was instituted to 
the living in 1453, and held it for fifty years. The font 
is elaborately carved, and of fifteenth century date. 
Apart from the small brass, there is no memorial of any 
interest ; but in the churchyard the tombs of the Skeppars 
and of Borrow's mother can easily be distinguished by 
their being mantled with ivy and the inscriptions rendered 
illegible by the grass and weeds which cover the slabs. 
Close beside them lies Mrs. Henrietta McOubrey, the 
step-daughter of Borrow, who died at Southtown, Great 
Yarmouth, a few years ago. On her tomb her relation- 
ship to Borrow is inscribed, together with the titles of 
his principal works ; but during her life she was usually 
very reticent in respect to him, and when approached 



GEORGE BORROW AT OULTON 183 

by Dr. Knapp whilst he was engaged upon his " Life " 
of Borrow, she refused to have any communication with 
him, and was very indignant at the idea of any one 
wishing to discover the facts of Borrow's private life. 
It was, however, my privilege to have a chat with her 
about Borrow during the summer of 1895, when I found 
her very enthusiastic about him, and confident that his 
chief works have an abiding place in English literature. 
Among her cherished relics of his Oulton home were 
the chair in which he sat when writing in his summer- 
house and a fine portrait of him by Phillips, She had 
vivid recollections of her journey with Borrow into 
" Wild Wales " ; also of the vigour with which he recited 
his own translations of some of the Norse and Danish 
poets. In the last letter I had from her she wrote : — 

" I thank you much for sending the magazine. . . . 
I cannot think that Mr. Murray's review of my step- 
father is very correct ; neither do my friends, some of 
whom have known him for years. We suppose the 
gentleman referred to is Dr. Whewell, of Cambridge 
celebrity ; both himself and his wife were personal 
friends of ours, and used to visit us at Oulton, so these 
wars described by Mr. Murray were not very alarming. 
Then, respecting the Scotch dish called Haggis, it could 
not be new to him (Borrow), for in his boyhood he went 
to the High School at Edinburgh, and had often partaken 
of it in that country ; besides, he could have it when he 
liked at his own table. My friends as well as myself 
consider it so very unlike George Borrow to enter 
people's houses by garden doors and ask what they 
have for dinner. All this I think rather amusing, for 
it shows that in these days, however silly, something 
must be written to make the people laugh. Mr. Borrow's 
mother was a very clever, delightful old lady, and lived 



184 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OFEASTANGLIA 

to a great age ; she is buried at Oulton. Mr. Borrow 
and my mother rest in Brompton Cemetery, where I 
have caused a simple tomb to be erected to their beloved 
memory." 

It is only in the summer-house beneath the firs and 
in this quiet churchyard on the border of the marshes 
that one now feels conscious of being in a way in touch 
with the spirit of the restless wanderer who, when life 
had nothing more for him, crept into this quiet corner 
of Suffolk to die. Amid the modern villas there is 
nothing to bring back to us that tall figure with the 
finely moulded head, thick white hair, and piercing 
brown eyes ; but in the churchyard on the crest of the 
upland slope, silent save for the sighing of the wind 
among the trees and the wailing of the lapwing in the 
marshes, one can still see that solitary man who wandered 
far and found many things, but failed to find happiness 
or contentment. 



CHAPTER XI 

DICKENS' " BLUNDERSTONE " AND THOMAS 

GRAY 

Blundeston — " David Copperfield " — Charles Dickens and 
" Blunderstone " — The Rookery— Blundeston Church — Blundes- 
ton Lodge — Rev. Norton NichoUs — Thomas Gray at Blundeston. 

FROM Oulton Church it is a pleasant walk of about 
two miles or so to Blundeston, the " Blunder- 
stone " of " David Copperfield " ; and though visitors to 
David's birthplace usually drive or cycle to it from 
Lowestoft or Yarmouth, the rambler who has reached 
Oulton, and has a few hours to spare, can hardly do 
better than continue his rambling to Blundeston by the 
upland by-road bordering the valley of the Waveney. 
It is a pleasant road, for Oulton's urban growth has 
not yet extended beyond the neighbourhood of Borrow's 
old home ; from Oulton Church onward the country is 
primitive and unspoilt, and as Blundeston is approached 
through Flixton, the only parish separating it from 
Oulton, there is one especially delightful spot where the 
road dips down between the grounds of Flixton Hall 
and Blundeston Lodge into a leafy hollow with wood- 
lands on the one hand and some fine black poplars and 
ancient oaks on the other. Having turned the corner 
just beyond this hollow, one is at once amid the scenes 
of David Copperfield's boyhood. 

185 



186 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EASTANGLIA 

It was near the close of the year 1848 that Charles 
Dickens saw Yarmouth for the first time, and some time 
during his stay there on that occasion he took a walk 
to Lowestoft, which he afterwards described to Mrs. 
Watson — to whom, with her husband, the Hon. R. 
Watson, "David Copperfield" was dedicated — as "a 
fine place." On his way there he saw the name 
" Blunderstone " (as he spells it) on a sign-post, and, as 
he says, he " took it from the said direction-post for the 
book." So it was that David, in his autobiography, had 
to write, " I was born at Blunderstone, in Suffolk." 

To-day it is Blundeston Rectory ^ which is usually 
identified as the house which David's father called the 
" Rookery," because he had seen some old rooks' nests 
in the elms at the bottom of the garden. It was like 
him to give it such a name for such a reason. " David 
Copperfield all over!" cried Miss Betsey. "David 
Copperfield from head to foot ! Calls a house a rookery 
when there is not a rook near it, and takes the birds on 
trust, because he sees the nests." But there is a rookery 
not far from the house to-day, and probably it was 
there at least a century ago, when a famous poet, whom 
we shall have to mention presently, strolled and mused 
beneath the trees in the grounds of Blundeston Lodge. 
The Rookery, however, — the house that is — is changed, 
and hardly recognizable as the creeper-clad cottage 
with the lattice window through which Miss Betsey 
Trotwood is peeping in H. K. Browne's well-known 

^ It is only fair to mention that there is a local tradition that 
Blundeston Hall is the "Rookery," and it is also said that Dickens 
visited the Hall while he was the guest of Sir Morton Peto at 
Somerleyton. 



DICKENS' " BLUNDERSTONE " 187 

frontispiece to the first edition of David's " Personal 
History and Experience." It seems to stand further 
back from the road, though there is no record of the 
road ever having been diverted from it ; even David 
would hardly know it now, and he would have more 
cause than ever to say — 

" There were great changes in my old home. The 
ragged nests, so long deserted by the rooks, were lopped 
and topped out of their remembered shapes. The 
garden had run wild, and half the windows of the house 
were shut up. It was occupied, but only by a poor 
lunatic gentleman, and the people who took care of him. 
He was always sitting at my little window, looking out 
into the churchyard ; and I wondered whether his 
rambling thoughts ever went upon any of the fancies 
that used to occupy mine, on the rosy mornings when I 
peeped out of that same little window in my night- 
clothes, and saw the sheep quietly feeding in the light 
of the rising sun." 

But if one can find little to remind one of either 
David or Dickens in the Rookery, it is not so with the 
old church, which can easily be seen from the Rookery 
windows and soon reached by the road that turns to the 
left near the old round village-pound. Surrounded by 
" dark-clustering " yews, " there is nothing half so green 
... as the grass of that churchyard ; nothing half so 
shady as its trees ; nothing half so quiet as its tomb- 
stones." Its Norman round tower evidently belonged 
to an earlier church, and is rather curious in that it 
tapers slightly towards the top, like the tower of a wind- 
mill ; but externally the church is just as it was in 
David's time, and one can still see " the red light shining 



188 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

on the sun-dial," and ask oneself, as he did, "Is the 
sundial glad, I wonder, that it can tell the time again ? " 
Within are an ancient font, a good fifteenth century 
rood-screen, and some old " poppy-head " bench-ends ; 
and the only noticeable change is the absence of the 
old high-backed pews. David would miss his high- 
backed pew, " with the window near it, out of which 
our house can be seen, and is seen many times during 
the morning's service, by Peggotty, who likes to make 
herself as sure as she can that it's not being robbed, or 
is not in flames." And meanwhile David, when not 
occupied with " the sunlight coming in at the open door 
through the porch," was looking " at the memorial 
tablets on the wall," and trying to think " of Mr. Bodgers 
late of this parish, and what the feelings of Mrs. Bodgers 
must have been, when affliction sore long time Mr. 
Bodgers bore, and physicians were in vain." And then 
he would wonder whether they called in Mr. Chillip, 
and he was in vain, and how he liked " to be reminded 
of it once a week." And finally, after thinking what a 
fine play-castle the pulpit would make with another boy 
coming up the stairs to attack it, he fell off the seat 
"with a crash" and was *' taken out, more dead than 
alive, by Peggotty." 

The village of Blundeston, which consists of one 
street with a windmill and a smithy at one end of it, 
and another smithy near the middle of it, still has its 
Yarmouth carrier, though his name is not Barkis ; and 
there are still in Blundeston a few — a very few — persons 
who know and are proud of Dickens having chosen 
their village to be the native place of the hero of his 
favourite book. Even fewer are the local folk who have 



THOMAS GRAY 189 

any idea that in their village the poet Gray spent some 
of the happiest days of his life. 

The Rev. Norton Nicholls, who was rector of Lound 
and Bradwell, but lived at Blundeston Lodge, was one 
of Gray's dearest friends. They became acquainted 
about 1760, when Nicholls was at Cambridge ; but 
Gray was not particularly attracted by the young under- 
graduate until they met in the rooms of Lobb, a Fellow 
of Peterhouse, when a chance comparison of a line of 
Milton with one from Dante caused the poet to discover 
in Nicholls a sympathetic student of literature. They 
soon became fast friends, and when Nicholls came to 
live at Blundeston Lodge, a plain but comfortable old 
house only a few minutes* walk from the " Rookery," 
Gray became an occasional visitor to this quiet Suffolk 
village. One or two writers who have not concerned 
themselves with dates have suggested that the idea of 
writing his famous " Elegy " came to him while he was 
walking in Blundeston churchyard ; but this is impos- 
sible, as the " Elegy " was completed at Stoke Pogis ten 
years before Gray and Nicholls became acquainted. 

Nicholls lived at Blundeston with his mother, and 
spent much time in beautifying the Lodge grounds and 
the borders of their charming lake, making the place, 
according to Mathias, an " oasis," and " one of the most 
finished scenes of cultivated sylvan delight which this 
island can offer to our view." Gray's favourite haunts 
within the grounds are said to have been an old summer- 
house at the end of the lake and the neighbourhood of 
an ancient pollard oak. He was much amused when 
Nicholls started gardening, and writing to him in June, 
1769, said — 



190 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EASTANGLIA 

" And so you have a garden of your own, and you 
plant and transplant, and are dirty and amused ? Are 
you not ashamed of yourself? Why, I have no such 
thing, you monster ; nor ever shall be either dirty or 
amused as long as I live. My gardens are in my 
windows, like those of a lodger up three pairs of stairs 
in Petticoat Lane, or Camomile Street, and they go to 
bed regularly under the same roof that I do. Dear ! 
how charming it must be to walk out in one's own 
garding^ and sit on a bench in the open air, with a 
fountain and leaden statue, and a rolling-stone, and an 
arbour ! Have a care of sore throats though, and 
the agoe." 

Nicholls was one of the few men who could rouse 
him out of his chronic melancholy, and in whose 
company he would talk freely ; ordinarily his acquaint- 
ances found him silent and dejected. For the sake of 
Nicholls and one or two others he would exert himself 
to be pleasant and cheerful, even when in uncongenial 
company. On one occasion he found two old relatives 
of his host, rather commonplace people, guests with him 
at the Lodge, and at first made it fairly obvious that he 
could not feel comfortable with them. But on noticing 
that Nicholls was hurt by his manner, he at once set 
about making himself agreeable to the strangers, with 
the result that they were delighted with him, and 
remembered him with pleasure so long as they lived. 
While here, too, he would always, Mr. Gosse tells us, 
" interest himself in any reference to farming, or to the 
condition of the crops, which bore upon his botanical 
pursuits ; one of his daily occupations, in his healthier 
years, being the construction of a botanical calendar." 
In the company of Nicholls, he would take long rambles 




a 3 

o ^. 

p a 

Q == 

5 S 



THOMAS GRAY 191 

about the countryside, both at Bkindeston and else- 
where. It was while they were walking together in the 
fields near Cambridge that Gray composed the charming 
couplet — 

" There pipes the wood-lark, and the song-thrush there 
Scatters his loose notes in the waste of air." 

For the preservation of these lines we are indebted to 
Nicholls. 

Gray died on July 30, 1771. How deeply Nicholls 
felt his death can be gathered from a letter written to 
his mother immediately after hearing of his friend's 
decease — 

" I only write now lest you should be apprehensive 
on my account since the death of my dear friend. 
Yesterday's post brought me the fatal news. . . . You 
need not be alarmed for me, I am well, and not subject 
to emotions violent enough to endanger my health, and 
besides with good people who pity me and can feel 
themselves. Afflicted you may be sure I am ! You 
who know I considered Mr. Gray as a second parent, 
that I thought only of him, talked of him for ever, 
wished him with me whenever I partook of any pleasure, 
and flew to him for refuge whenever I felt any uneasi- 
ness ; to whom now shall I talk of all I have seen here ? 
Who will teach me to read, to think, to feel } I protest 
to you, that whatever I did or thought had a reference 
to him, — ' Mr. Gray will be pleased with this when I 
tell him. I must ask Mr. Gray what he thinks of such 
a person or thing. He would like such a person or dis- 
like such another.' If I met with any chagrins, I 
comforted myself that I had a treasure at home ; if all 
the world had despised and hated me, I should have 
thought myself perfectly recompensed in his friendship. 
Now remauis only one loss more ; If I lose jyou, I am 



192 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EASTANGLIA 

left alone in the world. At present T feel I have lost 
half of myself. Let me hear that you are well." 

Before he died, Nicholls was inspired to write his 
valuable " Reminiscences of Gray," described by 
Forster ^ as " one of the most charming papers, at once 
for fulness and brevity, ever contributed to our know- 
ledge of a celebrated man." His death occurred in 
November, 1809. He was buried at Richmond, where 
the church contains a memorial tablet, recording that 
"he was the friend of the illustrious Gray." He was the 
only contemporary of Gray whose reminiscences of him 
are of much value to the biographer, though he himself 
has no claim to be considered a literary man. The 
Rev. Robert Potter, who has been already mentioned 
as one of the foremost scholars of the latter half of the 
eighteenth century, did not become Rector of Lowes- 
toft until after Gray's death, so it is unlikely that he 
met him at Blundeston ; but he wrote of him in a way 
suggestive of personal acquaintance. 

" Mr. Gray was perhaps the most learned man of the 
age, but his mind never contracted the rust of pedantry. 
He had too good an understanding to neglect that 
urbanity which renders society pleasing : his conversa- 
tion was instructing, elegant, and agreeable. Superior 
knowledge, an exquisite taste in the fine arts, and, above 
all, purity of morals, and an unaffected reverence for 
religion, made this excellent person an ornament to 
society, and an honour to human nature." 

' 111 his " Life and Times of Oliver Goldsmith." 



CHAPTER XII 
GREAT YARMOUTH 

Blundeston to Yarmouth — Mr. Barkis — Ham Peggotty — Peg- 
gotty's hut — Dickens at Yarmouth — Daniel Defoe — A model town 
— An " illiberal, tarpaulin crew" — John Wesley — Crabbe — Rev. 
Richard Turner — Dr. Frank Sayers — James Sayers — Rev. 
Samuel Cooper — Sir Astley Cooper — Sir James Paget — Samuel 
Laman Blanchard — Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey — 
Harriet Martineau — George Borrow — Dawson Turner — Borrow's 
bravery^His Norfolk rambles — Anna Gurney^Edward Fitz- 
Gerald at Gorleston — His opinion of " The Romany Rye " — Sir 
John Fastolff— Margaret Paston — Mautby. 

WHEN David Copperfield set out from Blundeston 
for Yarmouth to spend an eventful fortnight 
with Mr. Peggotty in that wonderful house of his on the 
beach, he did so in the company of Mr. Barkis, the 
carrier, whose route may have been through the coast 
village of Hopton or by way of the neighbouring 
village of Lound. Probably Mr. Barkis took the latter 
route, which would account for the many deviations up 
and down lanes which David found so tiresome. On 
approaching Yarmouth, he was not very favourably 
impressed by it ; it looked, he thought, " rather spongy 
and soppy," and when he noticed how it lay in " a 
straight low line under the sky," he hinted to Peggotty 
that "a mound or so might have improved it." He 
entered it by way of Gorleston (now a flourishing 
o 193 



194 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

watering-place) and the long Southtown Road, which 
afforded him glimpses of the harbour and its shipping ; 
and, after crossing the river by the Southtown Bridge, 
he probably continued his journey towards Peggotty's 
house along the picturesque South Quay or Middlegate 
Street, for he says — 

"When we got into the street, . . . and smelt the 
fish, and pitch, and oakum, and tar, and saw the sailors 
walking about, and the carts jingling up and down over 
the stones, I felt that I had done so busy a place an 
injustice, and said as much to Peggotty, who heard my 
expressions of delight with great complacency, and told 
me it was well known (I suppose to those who had the 
good fortune to be born Bloaters) that Yarmouth was, 
upon the whole, the finest place in the universe." 

Mounted on the broad back of the Herculean Ham, 
David was now made acquainted with a neighbourhood 
where everything was very wonderful to a country boy 
who had never seen a flourishing seaport. There were 
the timber-strewn yards of the shipbuilders, where the 
rapping of the caulkers' mauls resounded from the sides 
of the fishing-boats on the stocks ; net-chambers, where 
the women and girls who worked in them could, had 
they wished, have " stepped out on nothing " from door- 
ways ten feet from the ground ; shipsmiths' forges, 
where they made nothing that David had seen in the 
Blundeston smithies ; long, narrow rope-walks, where 
"human spiders" were continually twine-spinning ; and, 
here and there, from a shipwright's yard, the doorway 
of an inn, or the garden of a beachman's cottage, some 
strange-looking figure-head from a wrecked or con- 
demned ship would gaze at him with a wooden stare. 



GREAT YARMOUTH 195 

But the most wonderful sight of all was seen when he 
reached the narrow strip of sandy denes lying between 
the river and the sea near the harbour mouth. David 
was looking for Peggotty's house ; but all he could see 
in this sandy wilderness, was " a black barge, or some 
other kind of superannuated boat . . . high and dry on 
the ground, with an iron funnel sticking out of it for a 
chimney and smoking very cosily." Yet this "ship- 
looking thing" was Mr. Peggotty's house. "If it had 
been Aladdin's palace, roc's egg and all, I suppose," 
writes David, " I could not have been more charmed 
with the romantic idea of living in it." Sad to say, this 
romantic dwelling has now disappeared ; but there are 
still living in Yarmouth many people who can well 
remember such a house standing on the South Denes, 
not far from the Nelson monument. 

With the inmates of Peggotty's house — Mr. Peg- 
gotty. Ham, Little Em'ly, and the fretful Mrs. Gum- 
midge — we are all acquainted. Although David does 
not tell us so, Mr. Peggotty was, no doubt, a member of 
one of the famous Yarmouth beach companies, whose 
original occupation was the ferrying of fish from the 
fishing-boats to the beach, but who, with the aid of their 
long, slender yawls, undertook most of the salvage work 
of the coast, while they also shared in many daring life- 
boat services when ships were wrecked on the Pightle, 
Scroby, or Cross Sands. Nail, one of the numerous 
Yarmouth historians, says that at one time the children 
of the local beachmen made one prayer and one only, 
" Pray God, send daddy a good ship ashore before 
morning." Mr. Peggotty, had he not been a " bachel- 
dore," would never, we feel sure, have taught his 



196 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

children such a prayer, and we cannot imagine Little 
Em'ly uttering it. 

The inn from which David took his departure when 
he went from Yarmouth to London by the stage coach 
has been identified with the Crown and Anchor, on 
Hall Quay. Forster, in his " Life of Dickens," states 
that from the vividness of the boy-impressions in 
" David Copperfield," it has been inferred that Dickens 
was acquainted with Yarmouth in his boyhood ; but the 
truth is that he never saw the town until the latter part 
of 1848, when, in company with Leech and Lemon — 
Forster himself should have been of the party, but was 
prevented by illness — he came here from Norwich, 
stayed at the Royal Hotel on the sea-front, and found 
Yarmouth " the strangest place in the wide world ; one 
hundred and forty-six miles of hill-less marsh between 
it and London." He was evidently delighted with the 
quaintness of the old town, and added, " I shall certainly 
try my hand at it." Subsequently he suggested that if 
any one had a grudge against any particular insurance 
company, the best way to gratify it would be to buy a 
heavy life annuity and then retire to Yarmouth. The 
result would be that the insurance company would con- 
clude that "they had got either Old Parr or Methuselah 
in their books." In " Household Words " he described 
the town as " one vast gridiron, of which the bars are 
represented by the rows," i.e. the curious narrow lanes 
connecting the main streets. There are over one 
hundred and fifty of these rows, and formerly a special 
kind of cart called a " trolley " was built for traffic in 
them. 

Dickens is not the only famous writer who has 



GREAT YARMOUTH 197 

described a storm on the Yarmouth coast, his 
" Tempest " chapter in " David Copperfield " having 
in some respects a counterpart in " Robinson Crusoe," 
though there appears to be no evidence that Defoe 
visited the town before 1722, when he made his tour 
through the eastern counties. He was much im- 
pressed by the good government of the town, and 
especially with the " exact keeping " of the Sabbath 
by its inhabitants. 

" Among all these regularities," he wrote, " it is no 
wonder we do not find abundance of revelling, or that 
there is little encouragement to assemblies, plays, and 
gaming meetings at Yarmouth as in some other places ; 
and yet I do not see that the ladies here come behind 
any of the neighbouring counties, either in beauty, 
breeding, or behaviour ; to which may be added too, 
not at all to their disadvantage, that they generally go 
beyond them in fortunes." 

Yarmouth, notwithstanding that it has been the 
birthplace or place of residence of many distinguished 
men, can hardly be said to be rich in literary associa- 
tions, and when the name of Dickens has been men- 
tioned in connection with it, it is often assumed that its 
claims to the possession of such associations have been 
exhausted. Yet, in spite of the assertion made in the 
" Memoirs of a Royal Chaplain," that Yarmouth " is the 
most uncomfortable place in the nation for a man of 
learning and a generous mind to be fix'd in," the people 
being " a most illiberal, tarpaulin crew," men of learning 
have been very content to dwell here, while the recol- 
lections of its notable visitors have almost invariably 
been pleasant ones. The most noteworthy exception is 



198 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OFEASTANGLIA 

in the case of John Wesley, who in his Journal disagrees 
with Defoe, and describes Yarmouth as being " as 
eminent both for its wickedness and ignorance as ever 
any seaport in England." 

Nail tells us that the poet Crabbe was a frequent 
visitor to Yarmouth, and suggests that some of the 
scenes described in his " Borough " may be found on the 
local coast and by the quay-side ; but the Rev. George 
Crabbe, in his biography of his father, mentions only 
one occasion on which the poet visited the town, and 
that was when he brought here the manuscript of " The 
Borough," in order that he might submit it to his friend 
and rector, the Rev. Richard Turner, who resided in 
Yarmouth, and upon whose literary taste and judgment 
the poet placed the greatest reliance. Mr. Turner's 
opinion of the poem was "upon the whole, highly favour- 
able," so it was at once despatched to the publishers; 
but he had previously been less satisfied with several of 
Crabbe's works, which, in consequence, never saw the 
light of publicity. The Rev. Richard Turner, whose 
name is not so well remembered as that of his nephew, 
Dawson Turner, the antiquary, was a friend of Paley 
and Canning. He was in the habit of spending a week 
every year with Crabbe, while the latter was his curate 
at Sweffling, in Suffolk, and was residing in the neigh- 
bouring parish of Glemham. The poet, no doubt, re- 
turned some of these visits, and there are several scenes 
and persons described in his poems which may have 
been drawn, as Nail suggests, from Yarmouth. The 
following lines might very well apply to Peggotty's 
house : — 



GREAT YARMOUTH 199 

" Lo ! yonder shed ; observe its garden ground, 
With the low paling, formed of wreck around : 
There dwells a fisher ; if you view his boat, 
With bed and barrel — 'tis his house afloat ; 
Look at his house, where ropes, nets, blocks, abound. 
Tar, pitch, and oakum — 'tis his boat aground ; 
That space inclosed, but little he regards, 
Spread o'er with relics of masts, sails, and yards : 
Fish by the wall, on spits of elder rest. 
Of all his food the cheapest and the best, 
By his own labour caught, for his own hunger dress'd." 

Dr. Frank Sayers, the poet and metaphysician, spent 
some of his early years in Yarmouth, in the house of his 
grandfather ; but his name is more intimately connected 
with Norwich, where he subsequently resided. The 
house in which he lived here has long disappeared. It 
stood at the south-east corner of Gaol Street. Writing 
of it in after years, he said it was — 

" a stately old-fashioned mansion surrounding three sides 
of a gloomy court ; the hall was floored with chequered 
marble ; the large parlour was wainscoted with cedar, 
and a spacious staircase of shallow steps led up to the 
drawing-room, which was a long narrow gallery including 
seven windows. A Flemish folding screen, covered with 
gilt leather, inclosed a private nook round the chimney, 
in which the family sat when by themselves," 

A cousin of Dr. Sayers was James Sayers, the 
caricaturist, who was born here in 1748, his father being 
a local shipmaster. An unsuccessful love affair is said 
to have driven him from Yarmouth to London, where 
his clever caricatures attracted the attention of Pitt, and 
won him a sinecure appointment. He also distinguished 
himself as a satirist, and his "Elijah's Mantle," written on 



200 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

the death of Pitt, made a great impression on the public, 
though this was chiefly due to its being attributed to 
Canning. Contemporary with Sayers was the Rev, 
Samuel Cooper, a Yarmouth curate, whose name is 
remembered as that of the father of Sir Astley Cooper, 
the famous surgeon, and as the author of a poem called 
" The Task," the publication of which, soon after 
Cowper's " Task " was issued, caused Dr. Parr to make 
the epigram — 

" To Cowper's Task see Cooper's Task succeed ; 
That was a Task to write, but this to read." 

In the biography of Sir Astley Cooper we read of 
several practical jokes played upon the Rev. Dr. Cooper 
by his frolicsome son, who was a ringleader among the 
Yarmouth boys in their mischievous pranks. In later 
years another famous physician had pleasant memories 
of early days spent in botanizing and collecting birds 
and fishes in the Yarmouth district. This was Sir 
James Paget, who was born here, and who afterwards 
numbered among his intimate friends Lord Tennyson, 
Robert Browning, George Eliot, and Darwin. 

Readers of Forster's "Life of Dickens" will remember 
an interesting drawing by Maclise, in which the artist 
represents, with a touch of caricature, perhaps, a party 
of friends of the great novelist, assembled at 58, Lincoln's 
Inn Fields, on the night of December 2nd, 1844, to hear 
him read "The Chimes." Carlyle, Douglas Jerrold, 
Forster, and Maclise himself are of the party, and the 
artist has succeeded with remarkable cleverness in 
touching off their varied expressions of interest and 
admiration ; but there is one face in the group which 



GREAT YARMOUTH 201 

impresses one by its look of brooding and pre-occupation. 
It is that of Samuel Laman Blanchard, and one might 
very well imagine that when the artist was studying it 
Blanchard was well aware that his life was nearing its 
end. Within twelve months of that memorable night — 
in which, as Forster remarks, was the germ of those 
readings by Dickens to a wider public by which, as much 
as by his books, the world knew him in his later life — 
poor Blanchard was dead. He scarcely reached middle 
age, but had lived long enough to prove the wisdom of 
the warning of Lord Lytton, who, when Blanchard was 
at the beginning of his literary career, assured him that 
" periodical writing is the grave of true genius." But he 
had an attractive personality, and in enjoying the friend- 
ship of such men as Dickens, Lamb, Leigh Hunt, and 
Robert Browning, must have found some compensation 
for his failure to inscribe his name indelibly on the roll 
of successful men of letters. In the " Life of Dickens " 
and the Letters of Lamb we get fleeting glimpses of 
him, otherwise he would be forgotten. He was born at 
Yarmouth in 1804 and died in 1845, 

Yarmouth boasts of its fine Quay, which for 
picturesqueness can bear comparison with some more 
famous ones on the Continent ; but it is very doubtful 
whether it occurs to any one to-day to associate with it 
the two great contemporary poets Wordsworth and 
Coleridge, who were here in September, 1798, when 
they started together for Germany ; and although 
Nelson's sayings and doings when he landed here have 
never been forgotten, his biographer, Southey, probably 
trod the Yarmouth streets unnoticed, and was passed 
unheeded while he jotted down the epitaphs in St. 



202 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

Nicholas churchyard. Indeed, Yarmouth has always 
been too busy a place for such events as these to excite 
its interest or distract its attention from fishing and 
lodging-house matters ; otherwise it might be surprised 
to learn that as a child Harriet Martineau, unlike the 
thousands of other children who have disported them- 
selves on Yarmouth beach and jetty, was unable to 
delight in these popular places. 

" On first arriving there," she writes, " my father took 
me along the old jetty — little knowing what trouble I 
suffered. I remember the strong grasp of his large hand 
being some comfort ; but there were holes in the planking 
of the jetty quite large enough to let my foot through ; 
and they disclosed the horrible sight of the waves flowing 
and receding below, and great tufts of green weeds 
swaying to and fro." 

Which goes to prove that Harriet Martineau was not 
a healthy-minded child, or she would soon have been 
paddling in the sea or building sand-castles for the 
waves to destroy. 

George Borrow, while he had his home at Oulton, 
was a frequent visitor to Yarmouth, and was on friendly 
terms with Dawson Turner, to whom he entrusted for a 
while the manuscript of " The Bible in Spain." In the 
autumn of 1853, Borrow, acting on the advice of his 
friend Dr. Hake, brought his wife here for the benefit of 
her health, and for the next seven years Yarmouth was 
his headquarters while he made a series of excursions 
into various parts of the British Isles. During those 
years he did not hire a house, but occupied lodgings, 
first in King Street (No. 169), and afterwards at Camper- 
down Place and Trafalgar Place. Within a month of 



GREAT YARMOUTH 203 

his arrival he distinguished himself by an act of bravery, 
of which the follov^ing account appeared in the " Bury 
Post":— 

*^ Intrepidity. — Yarmouth jetty presented an extra- 
ordinary and thrilling spectacle on Thursday, the 8th 
inst,, about one o'clock. The sea raged frantically, and 
a ship's boat, endeavouring to land for water, was upset, 
and the men were engulfed in a wave some thirty feet 
high, and struggling with it in vain. The moment was 
an awful one, when George Borrow, the well-known 
author of ' Lavengro,' and ' The Bible in Spain,' dashed 
into the surf and saved one life, and through his instru- 
mentality the others were saved. We ourselves have 
known this brave and gifted man for years, and, daring 
as was this deed, we have known him more than once to 
risk his life for others. We are happy to add that he 
has sustained no material injury." 

In his ** Wild Wales," Borrow has given us the fruits 
of one of his holiday excursions from Yarmouth, and 
from the extracts made from his notebooks, and printed 
by his biographer, it is evident that he intended at one 
time to print his impressions of the Isle of Man. In 
1856 he contented himself with rambling through his 
native Norfolk, and on to Ely, calling on the way upon 
Miss Anna Gurney, who lived near Cromer, and who, 
according to his own account of the meeting, bored and 
worried him by asking for an explanation of a difficult 
point in Arabic, and then talking continuously while he 
tried to explain it. " I could not study the Arabic 
grammar and listen to her at the same time," he said, 
" so I threw down the book and ran out of the room." 
According to the Rev. A. W. Upcher, who tells the 
story in the *' Athenaeum," he seems not to have stopped 



204 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

running till he reached Old Tucker's Hotel at Cromer, 
from whence he went on to Sheringham to call on 
Mr. Upcher. 

" He told us," says that gentleman, " there were three 
personages in the world whom he had always had a 
desire to see ; two of these had slipped through his 
fingers, so he was determined to see the third. * Pray, 
Mr. Borrow, who were they ? ' He held up three fingers 
of his left hand and pointed them off with the forefinger 
of the right : the first, Daniel O'Connell ; the second, 
Lamplighter (the sire of Phosphorous, Lord Berner's 
winner of the Derby) ; the third, Anna Gurney. The 
first two were dead and he had not seen them ; now he 
had come to see Anna Gurney, and this was the end of 
his visit." 

At Sheringham Hall Borrow was greatly interested 
in a battlepiece by Wouvermans, and he said he had 
known an officer in the Austrian army who was a 
descendant of the painter. "Then entering the drawing- 
room and looking out of the bay-window through the 
oak wood on the deep blue sea beyond, he seemed for 
some time quite entranced by the lovely peaceful view," 
and at last Mr. Upcher felt he must arouse him, and 
said, " A charming view, Mr. Borrow ! " With a deep 
sigh he slowly answered, " Yes ! Please God the 
Russians don't come here." Borrow returned to his 
Yarmouth lodgings for the winter, in order to revise 
finally the manuscript of "The Romany Rye," which 
was published in the following May. A month later, 
Edward FitzGerald, who had recently married Lucy 
Barton, the daughter of the Quaker poet, and was 
staying in a house on Gorleston cliffs, wrote to Professor 
Cowell — 



GREAT YARMOUTH 205 

" Within hail almost lives George Borrow, who has 
lately published, and given me, two new volumes of 
" Lavengro," called " Romany Rye," with some excellent 
things, and some very bad (as I have made bold to 
write to him — how shall I face him ?). You would not 
like the Book at all, I think." 

Borrow's letters to his publisher and friends betray, 
at this time, a good deal of irritability and despondency, 
and such of his acquaintances as came in contact with 
him appear to have found him anything but a sociable 
companion. Mr. W. Willmot Dixon, who, with his 
father, was his guest at Yarmouth in 1859, mentions 
having heard him pour out all the vials of his wrath 
against his old enemy, Sir John Bowring (the "Old 
Radical" of the Appendix to "The Romany Rye"). 
Again and again he said that Bowring had wrecked his 
life. 

" From remarks that I heard Borrow drop in con- 
versation with my father," writes Mr. Dixon,^ " I think 
he must have been a rigid predestinarian, with a firm 
belief that his own fixed doom was eternal damnation. 
' Good-bye, my friend,' he said to my father at parting, 
'you are a good man. You will go to Heaven. I shall 
not. I shall probably never see you again here, and I 
cannot follow you there. Good-bye.' And I can recall 
distinctly now the tone of deep melancholy in his voice 
and the expression of profound sadness on his face as he 
spoke those farewell words." 

Just before leaving Yarmouth for London, where he 
spent the next fourteen years of his life, Borrow printed 
here his " Sleeping Bard," which has, however, the name 

' \x\T. P.'s Weekly^ h.Vi%\x%\ 7th, 1903. 



206 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EASTANGLIA 

of John Murray as publisher on the title-page. Two 
hundred and fifty copies of this translation from the 
Welsh were issued ; but the only review of it appeared 
in the "Quarterly," and was written by Borrow himself! 
FitzGerald when at Gorleston stayed at Albert 
House, from the windows of which he could watch the 
trawlers and fishing-boats passing in and out of the 
harbour, and the " Sailors walking about with fur caps 
and their brown hands in their Breeches Pockets." In 
later years, when he preferred Lowestoft as headquarters 
while taking short yachting trips along the coast, he and 
his fisherman friend, " Posh " Fletcher, would sometimes 
spend a day together in Yarmouth. 

"Yesterday," he wrote to Mr. F. Spalding in May, 
1876, "we went to Yarmouth, and bought a Boat for 
the Lugger, and paraded the Town, and dined at the 
Star Tavern {Beefsteak for one), and looked in to the 
Great Church: where when Posh pulled off his Cap, and 
stood erect but not irreverent, I thought he looked as 
good an Image of the Mould that Man was originally 
cast in, as you may chance to see in the Temple of The 
Maker in these days. The Artillery were blazing away 
on the Denes ; and the little Band-master, who played 
with his Troop here last summer, joined us as we were 
walking, and told Posh not to lag behind, for he was 
not at all ashamed to be seen walking with him. The 
little well-meaning Ass ! " 

A favourite ramble with many of Yarmouth's sum- 
mer visitors is to the ruined castle at Caister, built by 
that doughty old warrior. Sir John Fastolff, who figures 
so largely in the " Paston Letters," and less creditably 
in Shakespeare's " Henry VI. " ; but very few of these 
ramblers extend their journeying a mile or two to 



GREAT YARMOUTH 207 

Mautby, in order to visit the birthplace of Margaret 
Paston, that delightful dame whose correspondence 
reveals by far the most attractive personality presented 
by the famous letters. She has no claim to be con- 
sidered a literary celebrity, though she fills so large a 
part of the three closely printed volumes of Mr. Gaird- 
ner's edition ; but she was something better, and we 
can enjoy her letters the more because we know quite 
well that the writer of them can hardly have even dreamt 
that they would come under the public eye. A Hannah 
More may pronounce them "quite barbarous in style" ; 
but who is there to-day who, having accustomed himself 
to Dame Margaret's queer spelling, does not prefer her 
letters to those of Hannah More, or can doubt that, 
after centuries of oblivion, she has won for herself a 
permanent place in the world's esteem ? 

Mautby is a place of considerable acreage, but small 
population, known to cruisers on the Broads as a Bure- 
side parish containing within its borders Mautby Swim, 
so-called because it is a part of the river where cattle 
were made to swim across in order that they might feed 
in the marshes of the Bure valley. In Domesday it is 
spelt "Malteby," a name, like those of most of the neigh- 
bouring parishes, of Norse or Danish origin. From the 
beginning of the thirteenth century until the latter part 
of the fifteenth the lordship of the manor was held by 
the Mautebys,the last of whom was Margaret de Mauteby, 
who became the wife of John Paston, the son and heir 
of Sir William Paston, the judge. In the " Letters " we 
first hear of Margaret through Dame Agnes Paston, the 
judge's wife, who writes to her husband from Paston, in 
Norfolk, announcing the " coming and the bringing 



208 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

home " of that " gentlewoman," adding, " And as for the 
first acquaintance between John Paston and the said 
gentlewoman, she made him gentle cheer in gentle wise, 
and said he was verily your son. And so I hope there 
shall be need of no great treaty betwixt them." 

Margaret Paston's letters to her husband commence 
with one of uncertain date, believed to have been written 
soon after her marriage, which took place about 1440. 
She tells her '* right reverend and worshipful husband," 
to whom she recommends herself with " all her simple 
heart," that eleven hundred Flemings had landed at 
Waxham, a few miles from Paston, and eight hundred 
of them had been taken, and " kylte," and drowned. But 
although we get occasional references to Paston and 
other places in East Norfolk, most of Dame Margaret's 
letters during the early years of her married life were 
written from Norwich, where the Fastens had a town 
house. Indeed, at that time it was safer for the Paston 
dames to be there than at Paston during their husbands* 
absence from home ; for the Norfolk coast was frequently 
threatened by foreign pirates, who occasionally captured 
ships and men, causing Dame Agnes to pray that " the 
sea may be better kept than it is now, or else it shall 
be a perilous dwelling by the sea coast." But wherever 
Margaret Paston might be, she was always devoted to 
her husband's interests ; for her letters are full of her 
concern for his business affairs, and when claimants for 
one of his estates stormed and wrecked the manor-house 
she had to be carried from it by force. As Mr, Gairdner 
remarks, her letters contain no conventional expressions 
of tenderness — " the conventionality of the age seems to 
have required not tenderness, but humility, on the part 



GREAT YARMOUTH 209 

of women towards the head of a family " — but when her 
husband was taken ill in London, and the difficulties of 
travelling, and the care of a young child, prevented her 
going to see him, her loving, womanly nature is revealed. 

*' Right worshipful husband," she writes, " I recom- 
mend me to you, desiring heartily to hear of your 
welfare, thanking God of your amending of the great 
disease that you have had ; and I thank you for the 
letter that you sent me, for by my troth, my mother and 
I were sad in hearts from the time that we learnt of 
your sickness till we learnt verily of your amending. 
My mother behested another image of wax of the weight 
of you to our Lady of Walsingham, and she sent four 
nobles to the four Orders of Friars at Norwich to pray 
for you, and I have behested to go on a pilgrimage to 
Walsingham, and to St. Leonard's for you ; by my troth, 
I had never so heavy a season as I had from the time 
that I heard of your sickness till I learnt of your amend- 
ing. ... If I might have had my will, I should have 
seen you ere this. I would you were at home, if it were 
for your ease (and your sore might be as well looked to 
here as it is there ye be), now liever than a gown, though 
it were of scarlet." 

For the amusement of her absent husband, Dame 
Margaret sometimes gossips in quite a modern way, 
and, having steered her own course into the harbour of 
matrimony, is not above poking fun at her less fortunate 
relatives. 

" Katherine Walsham will be wedded on the Monday 
next after Trinity Sunday, as it is told me, to the gallant 
with the ' grete chene ; ' and there is purveyed for her 
much good array of gowns, girdles, and attires, and much 
other good array. . . . My mother prayeth you to remem- 
ber my sister, and to do your part faithfully ere ye come 
p 



210 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

home to help to get her a good marriage. It seemeth 
by my mother's language that she would never so fain 
to be delivered of her as she is now. It is told here that 
Knivett the heir is for to marry; both his wife and child 
be dead, as it was told here. Wherefore she would that 
you should enquire whether it be so or no, and what his 
livelihood is, and if ye think that it may be for to do, to 
let him be spoke with thereof. . . . As for tidings, the 
Queen came into this town (Norwich) on Tuesday last 
past afternoon, and abode here till it was Thursday 
afternoon ; and she sent after my cousin Elizabeth Clere 
by Sharynborn, to come to her ; and she durst not dis- 
obey her commandment, and came to her. And when 
she came into the Queen's presence, the Queen made 
right much of her, and desired her to have a husband, 
the which ye shall know of hereafter. But as for that, 
he is never nearer than he was before." 

In 1460, and for some years after. Dame Margaret, 
her husband now a knight of the shire, was living at 
Hellesdon, near Norwich, where was one of the Paston 
manor-houses ; but in 1465 — about a year before John 
Paston's death — that house was " beaten down " by the 
Duke of Suffolk, and from then until her death she seems 
to have spent the greater part of her time at Mautby, 
amid the scenes with which she had been familiar as 
a child. She died in November, 1484, having given 
instructions in her Will that her body should be buried 
in the aisle of the church of Mautby, before the image 
of Our Lady there, " in which aisle rest the bodies of 
divers of mine ancestors, whose souls God assoil." It 
was also her desire that her executors should — 

"purvey a stone of marble to be laid aloft upon my 
grave within a year next after my decease; and upon 
that stone I will have four scutcheons set at the four 



GREAT YARMOUTH 211 

corners . . . and in the midst of the said stone I will 
have a scutcheon set of Mautby's arms alone, and under 
the same these words written, ' In God is my trust,' with 
a scripture writing in the verges thereof rehearsing these 
words, * Here lies Margaret Paston, late the wife of John 
Paston, and heir of John Mawteby, squire, and so forth, 
in the same scripture rehearsed the day of the month 
and the year that I shall decease : on whose soul God 
have mercy.' " 

It is much to be regretted that the aisle in which 
Dame Margaret was buried was allowed to become a 
ruin, and has now entirely disappeared. But at the 
south end of the nave there is a marble tomb with a 
mutilated effigy, believed to be that of Walter de 
Mawteby, who died about the middle of the thirteenth 
century. 



CHAPTER XIII 

THE WAVENEY VALLEY 

Beccles — Crabbe married at Beccles — The Beccles martyrs — 
Roos Hall — Sir John Suckling — Barsham Rectory — Lawrence 
Echard — The mother of Lord Nelson — Rev. A. Inigo Suckling — 
Barsham Church — Barsham Hall — Sir John SuckHng at Barsham 
— Bungay — Friar Bungay — Robert Greene — Evving Ritchie — 
Hannah More — Elizabeth Bonhote — Bonhotian advice — Grammar 
School — Crabbe at Bungay — His narrow escape — The Childses — 
Agnes Strickland — Borrow — FitzGerald — Daniel O'Connell — 
Dickens — Charles Lamb on Bungay — Chateaubriand in exile — His 
life at Bungay — His love-affair with Charlotte Ives. 

FOR a spring morning, when the hawthorn buds are 
bursting into leaf and the corncrakes are back 
in the lush-grassed meadow-lands, I know of few 
more delightful walks in Eastern England than those 
afforded by the roads winding close to the valley borders 
of some of the higher reaches of the Waveney. For 
above Beccles, which is the highest point to which the 
majority of cruisers on the Waveney ascend, the valley 
is nowhere so wide that the rambler along one side of it 
cannot enjoy the charms of the other, while the water- 
meadows, which have been long reclaimed, have advanced 
beyond that stage of treeless monotony characteristic of 
the marshlands of the lower valley, and, while still 
subject to occasional floods, are so far firm land that 
the homes of other men than the semi-aquatic eel-catcher 

212 



THE WAVENEY VALLEY 213 

and marshman have a permanent place on them. It is 
a valley which seems to have known no very stirring 
time since those far-away days when the vesterviking 
Northmen sailed their war-keels up its sluggish river, 
and, judging by the small share its inhabitants generally 
appear to have taken in the events which go to make up 
the story of our land, it must have been happy in having 
no history. Peace within its borders seems to have been 
almost perpetual, perhaps because its quiet towns have 
never been large enough to become centres of strife ; and 
it may be that that peacefulness which is as impressive 
as its charm had an influence on some who were born in 
it, and others who were drawn to it by that spell woven 
in restful places. Had they played no larger part in 
life than that for which there is a fitting stage in this 
slumbrous valley, we should probably have heard little 
of them ; but having met with them or followed them, 
in reality or in fancy, through different and perhaps 
more stirring scenes, it is none the less pleasant to tread 
the quieter ways they have trod. 

It is a restful valley, and all its ways are leisurely — 
the seaward flow of its waters, the movements of the 
cattle in its daisy-starred meadows, the gait of the 
ploughman in the bordering fields, and the progress 
of the dark-sailed wherries on the river. So to enjoy 
to the full its dreamy peace and quietude one must enter 
into its mood of lethargy, to which there is nothing more 
conducive than the somnolence of the Beccles streets on 
any day in the week save market-day. For Beccles over- 
hangs the valley at the point where our ramble begins, 
and from its churchyard one has a view far up the 
valley, full of promise in its reposeful charm. In the 



214 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

town itself there is little save the church to delay one in 
leaving it, nor are its associations such as we are seeking, 
excepting in that it was in Beccles Church that George 
Crabbe, the poet, was married, and that Edward Fitz- 
Gerald, who often came here to chat with his friend. 
Dr. Crowfoot, had no fault to find with the place apart 
from its name always suggesting to him " hooks and eyes." 
The register entry of Crabbe's marriage reads : — 

" George Crabbe, clerk of this parish, singleman, and 
Sarah Elmy of the same, singlewoman, were married in 
this church by license from ye Chancellor this fifteenth 
day of December in the year One Thousand Seven 
Hundred and Eighty Three by me, P. Routh, Curate." 

Then follow the signatures of Crabbe and his wife 
and of William Elmy and H. Elmy as witnesses. The 
Elmys, to whom some reference was made when we 
were dealing with Crabbe's connection with Parham, 
occupied a corner house on the north side of Market 
Street, only a few steps from the church. Nearer the 
station this street is called Station Road, and about 
half way down it stands the Martyrs' Memorial Chapel, 
occupying a site adjoining the ground on which Thomas 
Spicer, John Denny, and Edmund Poole were burnt at 
the stake in the reign of Queen Mary. An inscription 
over the entrance to the chapel is from Foxe's " Actes 
and Monuments " — 

" When they rose from praier all went joyfvilie to 
the stake, and being bovnd thereto, and the fire bvrning 
arovnd them, they praised God in such an avdible 
voice that it was wonderfvl to all those which stood by 
and heard them." 



THE WAVENEY VALLEY 215 

Fuller, in writing of the Marian martyrs, says : — 

" It is vehemently suspected that three of them, 
burnt at Beccles, had their death antedated before the 
writ de hcBretico comburendo could possibly be brought 
down to the sheriff. And was not this (to use Tertullian's 
Latin in a somewhat different sense) festinatio homicidii ? 
Now, though charity may borrow a point of law to save 
life, surely cruelty should not steal one to destroy it," 

For forty-eight years the pastor of the Martyrs' 
Memorial Chapel was the Rev. George Wright, father of 
Mr. Aldis Wright, the friend and literary executor of 
Edward FitzGerald. 

In leaving Beccles by the Bungay road, on the 
Suffolk side of the river, a charming view of the 
valley opens out on the right, having in the foreground 
Roos Hall, a picturesque and well-preserved Elizabethan 
house, built about 1583. Soon after it was built it 
passed into the possession of the wife of Sir John 
Suckling, whose family has been intimately associated 
with the adjoining parish of Barsham for many genera- 
tions ; and for a while there was a prospect of its 
becoming the home of his son. Sir John Suckling, the 
poet ; but on the death of his father the young court 
gallant found himself so amply provided with rich 
estates as to be disinclined to add to their number, 
preferring rather to ruffle it at court than settle down 
to the quiet life of a country gentleman. For all that, 
there is reason to believe that the witty young gamester 
and charming song-writer spent some of his early 
years in the Waveney Valley, and just beyond Roos 
Hall the Bungay road enters the parish of which the 
history is chiefly that of the Suckling family. 



216 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OFEASTANGLIA 

Unquestionably, the most charming house in Barsham 
is its rectory, standing close beside the ancient round- 
towered church, some distance back from the road on 
the right, and separated from it by a pleasant park. 
In the whole valley there is no house more pleasing to 
the eye than this delightful one with the time-weathered 
Dutch gables of the Caroline period and its windows 
with armorial bearings of the Sucklings and the Earl of 
Norfolk in stained glass. Within, its panelled rooms 
have an atmosphere of the past and a silent suggestive- 
ness of old-time romance; nor is the impression one 
gets of its being a historical house lessened by what we 
know of its history. In the reign of Charles 11. there 
was born here Lawrence Echard, the great ecclesiastical 
historian, whose father was rector of the parish ; a little 
more than fifty years later Catherine Suckling, who 
became the wife of the Rev. Edmund Nelson and the 
mother of Lord Nelson, was born in one of the old 
panelled bedrooms; and from 1839 to 1856, the house 
was the home of the Rev. A. Inigo Suckling, the 
Suffolk historian. These are associations to make 
Barsham rectory historic, and there is also a large 
secret panelled hiding-place in one of its rooms to 
make it a house of mystery. In such a house, and 
with such surroundings, a man of leisure, it would 
seem, must needs become a student and a thinker, even 
though the world may never benefit by his " idly 
meditative days." 

The church, on which the thatched roof has just 
been renewed in the course of some restoration rendered 
necessary by the east end having been struck by 
lightning in February, 1906, has a Norman round tower 



THE WAVENEY VALLEY 217 

and some thick Norman walls ; but of the original 
windows only a small one remains on the north side of 
the nave, though there are traces of a similar one on 
the south side, where the porch has been built over it. 
In the south wall of the chancel there is an interesting 
lancet window with a transom ; but the rest of the 
stonework is chiefly of the fourteenth and fifteenth 
centuries. A fine brass, representing a knight in armour, 
is that of Sir Robert Atte Tye, who died in 1380 ; while 
an early Renaissance altar-tomb of moulded brick, with 
arabesque panels and a mutilated inscription, is probably 
that of Sir Edward Eckingham, who lived in the reign 
of Henry VHI., occupying the hall which afterwards 
belonged to the Sucklings. He was the builder of a 
chantry chapel, of which the arches and pillars remain 
in the rebuilt north wall of the nave. The church has 
no structural chancel, the east end being divided off by 
a Jacobean screen, the beam of which is probably the 
old rood beam. At the present time there are two 
fonts, one Norman, which was discovered some years 
ago ; the other of late Tudor date. A list of the 
rectors and patrons since 1321, including the names of 
several Sucklings, hangs in the nave, where there is also 
a seventeenth century alms-box. Four of the bells are 
new, and two of them bear inscriptions to the effect 
that they were given in memory of Lord Nelson and 
his uncle. Captain Maurice Suckling, who first took him 
to sea. Externally the church is remarkable for the 
almost unique lozenge-patterned flint and stone panelling 
of the east end, the pattern being continued in the 
tracery of the east window. 

On the north side of the church a leafy lane, if 



218 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OFEASTANGLIA 

followed a little way westward, terminates in a rough by- 
road leading down to the old Hall, formerly the manor- 
house of the Sucklings. For many years this ancient 
house has been converted into a farmhouse, and the 
approach to it is now by way of the farmyard, beyond 
which are the meadow-lands of the Waveney, the waters 
of which formerly filled the moat still bordering three 
sides of the garden. In front the house has been 
disfigured by a coating of pinkish wash ; but at the 
sides the old brickwork is visible, including that of some 
filled-in doorways and window-openings ; while at the 
back there are ruined walls draped with ivy and bright 
in spring with wallflowers. Picturesque the old house is 
still, but sadly changed since the time when it was the 
home of a Chancellor of the Exchequer to James I., 
and a Royalist Suckling made it the headquarters of a 
troop of Horse during the Civil War. 

As a lad Sir Thomas Suckling is believed to have 
spent some years at Barsham, and although the greater 
part of his life was passed amid far different scenes, it is 
not impossible that his mind, too often bemused by 
debauchery, was at times sweetened by memories of the 
Waveney meads in which he wandered as a child, and 
that those memories provided him with pleasing pictures 
for his tender love-songs. Of some of these it has well 
been said that, although written in prison, they '* remind 
us of the caged bird which learns its sweetest and most 
plaintive notes when deprived of its woodland liberty." 
As a cavalier. Suckling at least displayed gallantry 
towards the ladies, who inspired all that was best in him 
as a poet ; and even when, as in his famous " Ballad upon 
a Wedding," he assumed the character of a rustic, the 



THE WAVENEY VALLEY 219 

crimson doublet of the gallant shows through the 

thread-worn smock of the hind. It was the marriage of 

Lord Broghill to Lady Margaret Howard, daughter of 

the Earl of Suffolk, which was immortalized in that 

delightful ballad, which would please readers now as 

much as ever had there been nothing good in it save 

those charming lines — 

" Her feet beneath her petticoat 
Like little mice, stole in and out 

As if they feared the light : 
But oh ! she dances such a way : 
No sun upon an Easter-day 
Is half so fine a sight." 

It may be that Suckling was at Barsham for a while in 
1631 ; for in that year he is said to have attached him- 
self to a force of six thousand men which, under the 
Marquis of Hamilton, sailed from the neighbouring 
port of Yarmouth to reinforce the army of Gustavus 
Adolphus ; but if he was here then, it was probably for 
the last time. For on his return from the Continent 
he flung himself into dissipation, finding far more 
fascination in dicing and card-playing than in rural 
scenes or feats of arms. The picture Aubrey gives of 
him about this time is : — 

" He was incomparably ready at reparteeing, and his 
wit most sparkling when most set on and provoked. 
He was the greatest gallant of his time, the greatest 
gamester both for bowling and cards ; so that no shop- 
keeper would trust him for sixpence, as to-day for 
instance he might by winning be worth i^200 and the 
next day he might not be worth half so much, or 
perhaps be sometimes minus nihilo. He was of middle 
stature and slight strength, brisk round eyes, reddish- 
faced, and red-nosed (ill-liver), his head not big, his hair 



220 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

a kind of sand colour. His beard turned up naturally, 
so that he had a brisk and graceful look." 



It is a picture hardly in keeping with the water- 
meadows, or with an old farmhouse which for centuries 
has seen, in all probability, no worse dissipation than a 
farmhand's indulgence in a " glass too much " of home- 
brewed ale. 

In returning from the old Hall to continue his 
journey up the valley, the traveller has the choice of 
keeping to the main road or rambling through the 
fields by a footpath running parallel to it as far as the 
foot of a low hill on which stands Shipmeadow Church. 
Just beside the church the road divides into what are 
known as the High and Low roads, each running 
westward in the same direction, though the Low road 
keeps closer to the valley and affords the pleasanter 
views of the scenery bordering the river. Away to the 
right Geldeston Lock is seen, formerly the scene of 
some prize fights such as Borrow delighted in ; but the 
Waveney here is so narrow as to be almost indis- 
tinguishable as it winds amid the water-meadows, and 
the wherries on it seem to be sailing in some mysterious 
way amid buttercups, marsh marigolds, and cuckoo- 
flowers. A little further on a fine old wooden water- 
mill, the first encountered by cruisers in voyaging up 
the Waveney, stands within a stone's-throw of the 
second lock ; and then, about two miles from the spot 
where they parted, the two roads re-unite, and the 
church-towers and red roofs of Bungay are seen 
clustered on a low promontory projecting into the 
midst of the valley. But before the town is entered the 



THE WAVENEY VALLEY 221 

Roman road, Stone Street, is crossed near the Watch 
House Inn, not far from which was the ancient Wain 
Ford, the lowest ford on the river. 

Along the whole valley of the Waveney there is no 
town more picturesque than this ancient stronghold of 
the Earls of Norfolk, around which the river makes a 
horseshoe bend to embrace its breezy Common ; nor is 
there any town in the neighbourhood in which there 
is so much to interest an antiquary. In the midst of it 
the massive round towers of the Bigods' ruined castle 
dominate it from the midst of the remains of its huge 
earthworks ; in its principal churchyard are some ivy- 
grown fragments of a Benedictine nunnery ; close by 
stands one of the quaintest and best-preserved old 
market crosses in the Eastern counties ; while in St. 
Mary's Street is a fine sixteenth century house which 
alone is worth a journey to see. I may, perhaps, be 
justly accused of partiality when I claim so much for 
this sleepy little town ; for one who has spent many 
years in a place can hardly be expected to write of it 
entirely without bias ; still, after having seen almost 
every town in East Anglia, I am ready to maintain 
that none of them can compare with it in old-world 
charm and pleasant surroundings. Whenever I 

" In thought go up and down 
The pleasant streets of that dear old town," 

I am reminded of early associations of which a busy life 
has not obliterated even the most trivial details ; there 
is hardly a house of which I cannot recall the outward 
aspect. Prominent amongst them is that ancient 
sweet-shop into which, as a school-boy, you descended 
as into a cellar, and where a grim-looking old dame, 



LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

who seemed by her manner to consider your entrance 
an intrusion, provided you for a halfpenny with two 
gaily-striped " barber's-poles," a pair of gelatinous fishes, 
each with a single beady eye, or a yard-long " walking- 
stick " of yellowish brown rock, the last named produced 
from a long canister, like an exaggerated coffee tin. 
After a lapse of five-and-twenty years, that little shop 
down by the river has a greater attraction for me than 
any other in the ancient Bridge Street, though one of 
them, a large red-brick house, which was partly occu- 
pied by a stonemason, whose good lady would sell you 
thirty small pears for a penny, is far more noteworthy 
in having been for a time the residence of that eminent 
but susceptible Frenchman, Francois Rene, Vicomte de 
Chateaubriand. 

The early history of Bungay is largely that of the 
famous family of Bigod, whose baronial castle, in con- 
sequence of the disloyalty of its turbulent owner, was 
finally dismantled by the King's orders ; but even in 
early Plantagenet times it seems to have produced a 
learned man in Friar Bungay, the friend of Roger 
Bacon. Indeed, these two Franciscans long afterwards 
supplied the title of one of Robert Greene's most 
popular plays, the plot of which has a strong local 
colouring, and is thus summarized by the Rev. Dr. 
Raven : Prince Edward is hunting the hart in the 
Forest of Framlingham, and comes to " Merry Fressing- 
field," where at the Hall he becomes enamoured of a 
simple rustic beauty, the " fair Margaret of Fressing- 
field." Henry III., however, summons his son to 
himself, having other views for a matrimonial alliance, 
and the Prince deputes the Earl of Lincoln to look 



THE WAVENEY VALLEY 223 

after his interests. Margaret, apparently without intent, 
captivates not only the Earl, but two stout yeomen, 
Sersby of Cratfield and Lambert of Laxfield, who slay 
each other in single combat. This tragic event Friar 
Bungay exhibits in his magic glass to the sons of the 
combatants, students at Oxford, who are not backward 
to follow their fathers' examples, and the simple 
Margaret, after unwillingly causing this quadruple 
devastation, becomes Countess of Lincoln. The fair at 
Harleston, and the conversation about a horse which 
had been sold by the father of one of Margaret's many 
admirers to a man at Beccles, are described in very 
lively dialogue, and if the time is not accurately repre- 
sented, the same may be said of the greater part of 
Shakespeare's historical plays. Friar Bungay, like 
other magicians, had a dog, and " dog Bungay " was a 
name not unknown, though not so common as "dog 
Toby " of Apocryphal fame. Sir John Harrington had a 
dog Bungay, of which he wrote to Prince Henry, eldest 
son of James L : — 

" Now let Ulysses praise his dog Argus, or Tobite 
be led by that dog whose name doth not appear, yet 
could I say such things of my Bungey, for so was he 
styled, as might shame them both, either for good faith, 
clear wit, or wonderful deeds." 

The late Ewing Ritchie, in his " East Anglia," 
mentions among the earliest literary effusions which 
emanated from Bungay " The Dome of Heretiques ; or a 
discovery of subtle Foxes who were tyed tayle to tayle, 
and crept into the Church to do mischief" ; but he is more 
entertaining when he goes on to describe the social life 



224 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

of the town as it was in the latter half of the eighteenth 
century, when Hannah More — whose father was born 
at Thorp Hall, Harleston, a few miles higher up the 
valley — in writing to Garrick said the place was — 

" a much better town than I expected, very clean and 
pleasant. . . . You are," she added, "the favourite bard 
of Bungay, and the dramatic furore rages terribly 
among the people, the more so, I presume, from being 
allowed to vent itself so seldom. Everybody goes to 
the play every night — that is, every other night, which 
is as often as they perform. Visiting, drinking, and even 
card-playing, is for this happy month suspended ; nay, I 
question if, like Lent, it does not stop the celebration of 
weddings, for I do not believe there is a damsel in the 
town who would spare the time to be married during 
this rarely occurring scene of festivity. It must be 
confessed, however, the good folks have no bad taste." 

At the time when Hannah More wrote this a 
Norwich company of tragedians were in the town, 
performing in the old theatre, which is now converted 
into a Corn Hall. 

About the time of Hannah More's visit to Bungay 
there was living in the town Elizabeth Bonhote, a 
popular novelist of her day, whose husband combined 
the duties of a solicitor with those of the captaincy of 
the 2nd Company of Bungay Volunteers. She was the 
author of several novels, one of which was entitled 
" Bungay Castle " ; but the work which chiefly com- 
mended her to the matrons of England was her 
•' Parental Monitor," in which, amid a medley of 
maternal advice and moralizing, a number of letters 
from and answers to correspondents were introduced 
in the manner still in vogue in certain papers avowedly 



THE WAVENEY VALLEY 225 

devoted to the moral uplifting of youth. To such 
readers as can find entertainment in learning what kind 
of advice was given to Miss Catherine Haughty, when 
that young lady, who liked to live at her ease, " dress 
fine, play high, and to be seen at every publick place," 
had fascinated an infirm, ugly, but wealthy suitor ; or to 
Miss Henrietta Bevil, who, after being " brought up in 
ease and idle gentility," found herself, by the sudden 
death of her parents, "for ever deprived of all her 
flattering and high-raised expectations," a perusal of 
the " Parental Monitor " can be cordially recommended. 
But in case some may be indisposed to do this, and 
thus unwittingly debar themselves from acquiring much 
wisdom, I venture to give them here the benefit of a 
little Bonhotian advice and information. 

"Many of our English novels," you should know, 
" contain moral and entertaining lessons, and many of 
the characters are worthy of imitation : others there are, 
would tend to mislead your imagination, and give rise 
to a thousand erroneous and ridiculous expectations. 
The Spectators, the works of Richardson, Brooke, 
Burney, Cooper, Moore, Lee, may be read with delight 
and cannot fail of improving your minds, and of afford- 
ing you the highest entertainment. For your more 
serious reading, choose Young, Blair, Chapone, Gregory, 
Thomson, and the Oeconomy of Human Life. Observe 
the precepts they contain, and be assured, if you follow 
such excellent guides, you cannot fail of acting right, 
and rendering yourselves useful and exemplary members 
of society." 

In Earsham Street, which runs westward from the 
radiating point of all the Bungay main streets, the 
market-place, the Grammar School is interesting owing 
Q 



226 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OFEASTANGLIA 

to the poet Crabbe having been a scholar there, though 
not in the building now used, which is comparatively 
modern. First days at a boarding-school are rarely 
pleasant to a boy who has been accustomed to a 
mother's care ; but Crabbe seems to have been ex- 
ceptionally ill-prepared for having to look after himself. 
Until he went to school here, we are told, he had even 
relied on his mother to dress him, and on awaking the 
first morning in Bungay he at once found himself in 
difficulties. Watching the other boarders dressing them- 
selves appears to have helped him not at all, and finally, 

turning to his bed-fellow, he whispered : " Master G , 

can you put on your shirt ? for — for I'm afraid I cannot ! " 
And it was while he was at Bungay school he nearly — 
as he always afterwards believed — lost his life. With 
some other boys, he was one day playing a game which 
seems to have partly consisted of being put into a large 
dog-kennel called the "black hole." Crabbe was the 
first to enter this kennel, which soon became so crammed 
with boys that he felt he was being suffocated. His 
shrieks, however, were unheeded, and it was not until 
he bit the hand of the boy nearest to him, who roared 
out, " Crabbe is dying ! Crabbe is dying ! " that he was 
allowed to escape. Years afterwards he still had so 
vivid a recollection of the horrible sensation he ex- 
perienced in the " black hole " that he said, " A minute 
more, and I must have died." 

To-day Bungay is undoubtedly most widely known 
in consequence of the name of the town appearing on 
the last pages of so many books that have been printed 
here ; and this reminds us that the local branch of the 
well-known firm of printers is an old-established one, 



THE WAVENEY VALLEY 227 

which owed most of its ancient fame to the enterprise 
of John Childs, who was largely concerned in the 
publication of the Imperial Edition of Standard 
Authors, and to whom was mainly due the destruction 
of the Bible-printing monopoly. In the earlier half of 
the last century the Bungay Press became widely 
famous for its many cheap and valuable productions 
and reprints, while the house of John Childs, in Broad 
Street — easily distinguished by its pillared portico — 
was frequently a meeting-place of scholarly folk and 
literary celebrities. Robert Childs, a son of John of 
that ilk, married a sister of Agnes Strickland, and the 
historian of the Queens of England was an occasional 
guest at the Broad Street house. There she met a 
certain gentleman who had compiled a French dictionary 
the Childses were printing, and who appears to have been 
afflicted with a slight impediment in his speech. During 
dinner, Mr. Ritchie tells us, Agnes Strickland, to whom 
kings were more than human and little less than divine, 
turned to this gentleman and asked : " Do you not 
think it was a cruel and wicked act to murder the 
sainted and unfortunate Charles I.}" "Why, ma'am," 
was the stammered reply, " I'd have p-p-poisoned him ! " 
George Borrow, too, appears to have known the Childses, 
and to have ridden over to their house whilst he had 
his home at Oulton ; and in a letter written to him by 
the Rev. George Cobb, of Ellingham, under date of 
November 19th, 1859, we read: " FitzGerald was at 
Bungay last week. He was staying with Mr. (Charles) 
Childs, and I met him at the Singing Class which the 
latter has established, and which is working very well." 
This appears to have been a custom of FitzGerald 



228 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

for some years, for writing to Frederick Tennyson in 
1850, he says : — 

" Sometimes ... I go over to a place elegantly 
called Bungay, where a Printer lives who drills the 
young folks of a manufactory there to sing in Chorus 
once a week. . . . They sing some of the English 
Madrigals, some of Purcell, and some of Handel, in a 
way to satisfy me, who don't want perfection, and who 
believe that the grandest things do not depend on 
delicate finish. If you were here now, we would go 
over and hear the Harmonious Blacksmith sung in 
Chorus, with words, of course. It almost made me cry 
when I heard the divine Air rolled into vocal harmony 
from the four corners of a large Hall. One can scarce 
comprehend the Beauty of the English Madrigals till 
one hears them done (though coarsely) in this way and 
on a large scale : the play of the parts as they alternate 
from the different quarters of the room." 

A celebrity of another kind associated with the old 
house in Broad Street was Daniel O'Connell, whose 
speech, delivered in the old Theatre, was reported by 
Charles Dickens, who posted down from London to 
take the necessary notes. Years afterwards, when 
Dickens heard of O'Connell's release from prison by the 
judgement of the Lords on appeal, he may have had 
some recollection of that Bungay speech when he wrote : 
" O'Connell's speeches are the old thing : fretty, boastful, 
frothy, waspish at the voices in the crowd, and all that ; 
but with no true greatness." 

We find, too, Charles Lamb writing to Mr. Childs 
in 1834, offering to lend him his own "sole copy" of 
the " Essays of Elia." " In return," he adds, " you shall 
favour me with the loan of one of those Norfolk-bred 



THE WAVENEY VALLEY 229 

grunters that you laud so highly ; I promise not to 
keep it above a day." And he goes on to remark : 
" What a funny name Bungay is ! I never dreamt of 
a correspondent thence. I used to think of it as 
some Utopian town, or borough in Gotham land. I 
now believe in its existence, as part of Merry England." 
How it happened that famous French writer and 
politician Chateaubriand came to Bungay is related 
in one of the six volumes of his "Memoirs." When, 
in 1793, he was compelled to leave his native land, 
then in the throes of the Terror, he first occupied a 
garret in Holborn, where he suffered great hardships, 
and for a time was so ill that more than one doctor 
gave him up as incurable. He himself believed he was 
dying when he began his essay on " Revolutions " ; but 
he regained his health and contrived to earn a little 
money by making translations. This small sum, how- 
ever, was soon exhausted, and after he and a friend had 
made their last shilling buy food for them for five days, 
he was, as he says, " devoured with hunger. I burned 
with fever, sleep had deserted me, I sucked pieces of 
linen which I soaked in water, I chewed grass and 
paper." Just as he was in the lowest depths of despair 
his wife's relatives sent him some money, and he took 
possession of another garret in the neighbourhood of 
Marylebone Street. From thence he removed to 
Beccles, where he found employment in translating 
some old French MSS., and afterwards in giving 
French lessons to young people of the neighbourhood. 
Among his pupils was Charlotte Ives, a very pretty and 
charming girl with large dark eyes, whose father was 
rector of St. Margaret, Ilketshall, but lived in Bridge 



230 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EASTANGLIA 

Street, Bungay. Master and pupil were mutually- 
attracted by each other ; and the former's attentions 
were so marked that Miss Ives concluded that it was 
only his lack of means and position prevented his 
declaring his love. Her mother, to whom she confided 
her feelings, seems to have taken a like view of the 
matter ; and one day, when Chateaubriand was stay- 
ing at Bungay, she proposed to him that he should 
marry her daughter and inherit their property. How 
Chateaubriand received this proposal he himself has 
related : " I threw myself at Mrs. Ives' feet, and covered 
her hands with my kisses and my tears. She stretched 
out her hand to pull the bell-rope. ' Stop,' I cried, * I 
am a married man ! ' She fell back fainting." 

What were the feelings of Charlotte Ives when she 
heard that her admirer already had a wife in France, 
we are not told ; but evidently she was not quite 
inconsolable, for subsequently she married a naval 
officer who became Admiral Sutton, and who lived at 
Ditchingham Lodge, an old house pleasantly situated 
at the foot of the Bath Hills which border the 
Waveney. Once again, at least, she met Chateau- 
briand ; but that was not until nearly thirty years had 
elapsed since he made to her mother that startling 
confession. By that time he had returned to England 
as Ambassador of France, and she called on him one 
day to induce him to use his influence with Lord 
Canning to secure the appointment of one of her sons 
to his suite as Governor-General of India. Chateau- 
briand seems to have really loved her ; but, as he told 
himself after their meeting, although she was the first 
woman he had ever loved, a sentiment of that kind 



THE WAVENEY VALLEY 231 

"was in no way sympathetic with my stormy nature, 
the latter would have corrupted it and made me 
incapable of enjoying such sacred delectations." 

The old red-brick house with which the name of 
the amorous Frenchman has by such curious chance 
become connected, is seen on the right as one leaves 
the town by way of Bridge Street. For a time 
Chateaubriand used one of its rooms as a school-room, 
and, according to Mr. Rider Haggard, there is a local 
tradition that his pupils used to call him Monsieur 
" Shatterbrain." 



CHAPTER XIV 
THE WAVENEY VALLEY (mntinued) 

Mr. H, Rider Haggard — Sir Samuel Baker — Broome Rectory 
— Thomas Manning — Lamb and Manning — Geldeston Hall — 
FitzGerald at Geldeston — Nero and the delicacy of Spring — 
Stuston — William Broome — His association with Pope — Diss 
— John Skelton — His attacks on Wolsey — His poems — " The 
Death of Phyllyp Sparowe " — Skelton and the " curious 
impertinent " man — "Ware the Hawke " — Skelton's death — Mrs. 
Barbauld — Her Palgrave school and its scholars — Charles Lamb 
and Mrs. Barbauld. 

FOR a day's ramble in the Waveney Valley it is 
enough to walk from Beccles to Bungay along 
the Suffolk side of the river and return to Beccles 
by the road following the windings of the valley on 
the Norfolk side. This latter road is a continuation 
of that leaving Bungay by way of Bridge Street, and 
just across the river it passes through Ditchingham, 
where Mr. H. Rider Haggard has his home and the 
garden he has so lovingly described in his " Gardener's 
Year." But Ditchingham House stands some distance 
to the left of our road, and so, too, does Hedenham 
Hall, where dwelt for a time Sir Samuel Baker, the 
African explorer and author of several fascinating 
books of travel and adventure ; so, as Beccles should 
be reached before the night-mists gather over Gilling- 
ham Dam and marshes, it will be as well if we hasten 

232 



THE WAVENEY VALLEY 233 

on to Broome, the next parish to Ditchingham, and 
then pause awhile beside the very picturesque old 
rectory which was the birthplace, in 1772, of Thomas 
Manning, that somewhat eccentric scholar and traveller 
who was a friend of Porson, the famous Professor of 
Greek at Cambridge, and afterwards of Charles Lamb. 
Manning spent his youth at Broome, where his father 
was rector, and owing to ill-health he was educated at 
home for the University ; but after that Broome saw 
little or nothing of him, nor has he left us any account 
of how he spent his time here. It was while he was 
at Caius College that he met Lamb, who in the 
** Essays of Elia " refers to him as " my friend M., who 
with great painstaking got me to think I understood 
the first proposition of Euclid, but gave me over in 
despair at the second." Their friendship lasted several 
years, notwithstanding Manning's restless disposition 
making him averse to settling down anywhere for 
very long ; when he went to Canton as an East India 
Company doctor, Mary Lamb wrote : " The loss of 
Manning made Charles very dull." Even in Canton 
Manning could not content himself with attending to 
his duties, but must needs make several unsuccessful 
attempts to penetrate the interior of China. Eventually 
he entered Bhutan and reached the frontier of Thibet, 
and from thence, by joining the staff of a Chinese 
general, he succeeded in making his way to Lhassa, 
which he reached in December, 181 1, being the first 
Englishman to enter that sacred and, at that time, 
forbidden city. Both in China and at home he 
devoted himself mainly to Chinese classical literature, 
with the result that he came to be considered the 



234 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OFEASTANGLIA 

foremost Chinese scholar of his day. Charles Lamb, 
in writing to Robert Lloyd, describes Manning as — 

" a dainty chiel — a man of great Power — an enchanter 
almost. — Far beyond Coleridge or any man in power of 
impressing — when he gets you alone he can act the 
wonders of Egypt. Only he is lazy, and does not 
always put forth all his strength ; if he did, I know no 
man of genius at all comparable to him." 

For some years Manning and Lamb kept up a fairly 
regular correspondence, and we owe to their friendship 
that " incomparable collection of letters," as Canon 
Jessopp well calls it, for the possession of which, if we 
had it not, we would cheerfully part with many so- 
called literary masterpieces. When Lamb heard of 
his friend's proposed journey into Central Asia, he at 
once played upon him with all the fountains of his 
abounding wit. 

" The general scope of your letter afforded no indica- 
tions of insanity, but some particular points raised a 
scruple. For God's sake don't think any more of 
' Independent Tartary.' What are you to do among 
such Ethiopians ? Is there no lineal descendant of 
Prester John ? Is the chair empty ? Is the sword 
unswayed ? Depend upon it they'll never make you 
their king, as long as any branch of that great stock is 
remaining. I tremble for your Christianit3^ They will 
certainly circumcise you. Read Sir John Mandeville's 
travels to cure you, or come over to England. There 
is a Tartar-man now exhibiting at Exeter Change. 
Come and talk with him, and hear what he says first. 
. . . Tartar-people ! Some say they are Cannibals ; 
and then, conceive a Tartar-fellow eating my friend, 
and adding the cool malignity of mustard and vinegar ! 
. . . Pray try and cure yourself. Take hellebore. . . . 



THE WAVENEY VALLEY 235 

Shave yourself oftener. Eat no saffron, for saffron- 
eaters contract a terrible Tartar-like yellow. Shave the 
tipper lip. Go about like a European. Read no books 
of voyages (they are nothing but lies), only now and 
then a romance, to keep the fancy under. Above all, 
don't go and see any sights of wild beasts. That has 
been your ruin. . . . Have a care, my dear friend, of 
Anthropophagi ! their stomachs are always craving. 
'Tis terrible to be weighed out at fivepence a pound ; 
to sit at table (the reverse of the fishes in Holland) 
not as a guest, but as a meat. God bless you : do come 
to England. Air and exercise may do great things. 
Talk with some minister. Why not your father ? " 

Soon after Broome has been passed through, and 
what was once the island of Ellingham has been skirted 
on its northern side, the rounded outline of Dunburgh 
Hill is seen projected into the valley, and presently, as 
we ascend a slight incline, the tower of Geldeston 
Church comes in sight, though almost hidden by the 
trees surrounding it. A few steps further, and on ithe 
opposite side of the road, a view of Geldeston Park 
opens out, with the large eighteenth century Hall in the 
background. Here it was that Edward FitzGerald so 
often came to sit beneath one of the trees in the park or 
lounge on a garden bench, spending most of his time in 
reading and lamenting that the pleasant days were so 
short and life so quickly slipped away. For the Hall 
was for several years the home of his sister, Mrs. 
Kerrich, and in the adjoining parish of Gillingham lived 
one of his friends, Mrs. Schutz, an old lady whom he 
often strolled down the road to see, and who imparted 
to him "the names of the stars and other chaste in- 
formation." Here, too, he stayed a few days with his 



236 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

wife during the few months they lived together ; but 
that was when his life had been saddened by the death of 
old and dear friends and its rosy promise was dimming 
fast to grey. Already, too, he was beginning to realise 
how grave a mistake his marriage had been, and, com- 
paring the present with the past, he may have looked 
back to 'that bright April morning in 1839, which he 
spent here in reading about Nero. 

" Here I live in tolerable content," he wrote to John 
Allen : " perhaps with as much as most people arrive 
at, and what if one were properly grateful one would 
perhaps call perfect happiness. Here is a glorious sun- 
shiny day : all the morning I read about Nero in Tacitus 
lying at full length on a bench in the garden : a nightin- 
gale singing, and some red anemones eyeing the sun 
manfully not far off. A funny mixture all this : Nero, 
and the delicacy of Spring : all very human, however. 
Then at half-past one lunch on a Cambridge cream 
cheese : then a ride over hill and dale : then spudding 
up some weeds from the grass : and then coming in, I 
sit down to write to you, my sister winding red worsted 
from the back of a chair, and the most delightful little 
girl in the world chattering incessantly. So runs the 
world away. You think I live in Epicurean ease : but 
this happens to be a jolly day : one isn't always well, or 
tolerably good, the weather is not always clear, nor 
nightingales singing, nor Tacitus full of pleasant atrocity. 
But such as life is, I believe I have got hold of a good 
end of it." 

But after his sister Eleanor Kerrich died — her tomb 
is just inside one of the gates of the pretty, peaceful 
little churchyard — Geldeston had little attraction for 
him ; he could never find pleasure where his surround- 
ings suggested dead relatives or friends. 



THE AVAVENEY VALLEY 237 

" The good die," he wrote to Mrs. Kenworthy 
Browne, when he heard of his sister's death : " they 
sacrifice themselves for others; she never thought of 
herself, only her children. ... I will not go to the 
wretched funeral, where there are plenty of mourners ; 
but I shall go to Geldeston when they wish me." 

Above Bungay the Waveney is a very small stream, 
but here and there its checked waters have sufficient 
force to turn the wheel of a mill, while the fact of the 
valley being narrower enhances the charm of the scenery 
along some of its reaches by bringing the well-wooded 
uplands close to the winding stream. The country 
bordering the river abounds with quaint and picturesque 
old moated farm-houses, not a few of them being led up 
to by ancient lanes and trackways, which in early times 
were probably branches of the Roman road that 
crosses the river at Scole ; while at Wingfield, which 
adjoins the riverside village of Syleham, there are 
interesting remains of a fine fortified manor-house, built 
in the fourteenth century by Michael de la Pole, Earl of 
Suffolk, a descendant of whom, John de la Pole, was he 
of whom Margaret Paston complains in one of her letters 
on account of his attempting to seize her husband's 
house at Hellesdon, near Norwich. At Scole ithere is 
still that fine old inn, the White Hart, in much the same 
condition externally as when Defoe saw it on his way 
from High Suffolk to Norwich, though its famous sign, 
that elaborate structure, with many allegorical devices, 
which spanned the road, has long since disappeared. 
And just across the river, on its Suffolk side, is Stuston, 
which in the earlier half of the eighteenth century had 
for its rector William Broome, a poet who by now would 



LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

be quite forgotten had he not been intimately associated 
with Pope, for whom he and his friend Elijah Fenton 
made the metrical translation of about half of the 
twenty-four books of the Odyssey. Broome was pre- 
sented to the living of Stuston, in 1713, by Lord Corn- 
wallis, and married a wealthy widow. During his 
residence there he did most of what Canon Raven calls 
the " sub-contracted " work for Pope, often working with 
Fenton, who frequently visited him, and who has 
revealed to us, in his letters, the remarkably mercantile 
arrangements which existed between Pope and his 
various assistants. Broome, as well as assisting in the 
translation, appears to have been entirely responsible 
for the notes ; so there was much justification for the 
assertion made in Orator Henley's distich : 

" Pope came off clean with Homer ; but they say 
Broome went before and kindly swept the way ; " 

but Broome, though he had a modest opinion of his own 
poetical and literary efforts, seems to have been very 
dissatisfied with the amount of the remuneration he 
received from Pope, and did not hesitate to say so. As 
a result, he found himself pilloried in the " Dunciad," 
and in " Bathos," and included among " the parrots who 
repeat another's words in such a hoarse odd tune as makes 
them seem their own." In the Stuston parish register 
we find that he was married in i7i6to Elizabeth Clarke, 
a widow ; and that when he had a son born to him "the 
Right Honble Charles Lord Cornwallis & ye young 
Lady Mary, his sister, answered for him " at the 
baptism. 

Having reached the little town of Diss, built around 



THE WAVENEY VALLEY 239 

a small mere, the explorer of the Waveney Valley has 
almost reached the source of the river, which rises near 
by, in a tract of marsh at Lopham Ford. Diss is a 
pleasant little town, with an interesting church ; but its 
claim to our attention just now rests upon its having 
had for its rector, John Skelton, who was Poet Laureate 
in the reign of Henry VIII., and probably lived in a 
house that stood on the site of the present rectory. 
Skelton, who was probably a Norfolk man by birth, 
though his birthplace is not known, was a fairly 
voluminous writer whose poetical works are chiefly 
serious or satiric. The former have little or no appeal 
to us to-day, but his comic or satirical writings are 
characterised by true originality, and it has been said 
of him that in this direction " he struck out a path in 
literature, not very high it is true, but one in which he 
had no predecessors and has found no equals." That 
he was a bold man is witnessed to by his fearless and 
furious attacks on Cardinal Wolsey, against whom he 
became the champion of the people ; that he possessed 
no small amount of learning is evident from the 
classical allusions with which his poems abound ; and 
that many of his works are still worthy of careful study 
on account of their instructive examples of the colloquial 
English of his time, is agreed by almost every one who 
has read them. Even now there must be many readers 
who will excuse the coarseness in enjoying the genuine 
humour of " The Tunning of Elinour Rummyng," while 
Skelton's poem " On the Death of Phyllyp Sparowe," 
which Coleridge has described as " excellent and 
original," can be read with equal enjoyment. It is 
the story of the death of a pet sparrow kept by Jane 



240 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OFEASTANGLIA 

Scroupe, of the Benedictine nunnery at Carrow, Norwich. 
This unfortunate bird was killed by the nunnery cat, 
Gib, and in the poem, which is supposed to proceed 
from the mouth of the lamenting owner of the deceased 
pet, the whole race of cats is excommunicated and a 
funeral service is humorously described, in which all 
the birds take part. The poem is written in the char- 
acteristic " Skeltonical " metre, of which the following 
is a specimen : — 

" That vengeaunce I aske and crye, 
By way of exclamacyon, 
On all the hole nacyon 
Of cattes wylde and tame — 
God send them sorrowe & shame ! 
That cat specyally 
That slew so cruelly 
My lytell prety sparowe, 
That I brought up at Carowe." 

Many witty, if somewhat coarse, tales are attributed 
to the " Laureate Parson of Disse," as he sometimes 
signed himself, one of the most printable of which 
concerns his reply to a "curious impertinent" man, who 
one day plied him with many questions. 

" Syr, sayd the man. You do know well that after 
Chryste dyd rise from death to life, it was xl days after 
ere he dyd ascend into heaven, and he was but certaine 
times with hys discyples, and when that he dyd appeare 
to them, he dyd never tary longe amongst them, but 
sodainely vanished from them ; I wolde faine Know 
(saith the man to Skelton) where Chryste was all these 
xl. dayes. Where he was, saythe Skelton, God Knoweth ; 
He was verye busye in the woods among hys labourers 
that dyd make fagottes to burn heretickes, and such as 
thou art which doest aske such diffuse questions." 



THE WAVENEY VALLEY 241 

From this we can understand how it was that Webbe 
came to describe Skelton as " a very pleasant conceited 
fellow & of a very sharpe wit, exceeding bolde, & would 
nippe to the very quick, where he once set hold." 

In a recently published paper on Skelton,^ the 
Rev. C. U. Manning, of Diss, points out that in his 
poem " Ware the Hawke " the Laureate Rector 

" gives a curious insight into the low standard of religious 
feeling in his days with regard to holy places and holy 
things. He tells us of a beneficed parson who made 
use of Diss Church as a place to fly his hawk — probably 
to train it 

* A Priest unrevent, 
Straight to the Sacrament 
He made his Hawke to fly : 
With hugeous showte & cry 
The Hye Altar he strype naked.' 

This ' fonde frantike falconer ' swore horrible oaths, 
vowing that before he left the church his hawk should 
eat a pigeon till the blood ran raw upon the very altar 
stone. He bolted and barred himself in the church, 
but the Rector came, and very naturally and very 
properly strongly objected to the way in which he was 
amusing himself. Says Skelton — 

' With a pretty gin 
I fortuned to come in 
This rebell to behold, 
Where of him I contrould ; 
But he said that he wolde, 
Agaynst my mind & will, 
In my Church hawke still.' 

While they were disputing, a huntsman threatened to 

' In The Afitiquary, October, 1905. 



242 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

turn a fox loose in the church, and set his hounds on it, 
and then — 

' Down went my offering box, 

Boke, bell, & candell, 

All that he might handelL' " 

"This scandalous scene," remarks Mr. Manning, 
"justified Skelton in protesting against the clergy of 
that period, and aiding the cause of the Reformation." 
Naturally enough, he made many enemies, and we find 
that he was suspended by the Bishop of the diocese, 
one of the reasons given being " disobedience to the 
rule of clerical celibacy." But it was Wolsey who 
finally compelled him to seek sanctuary of Abbot Islip 
at Westminster, where he died in 1529, and was buried 
in the chancel of St. Margaret's Church. 

Few people, I venture to say, read the works of 
Skelton nowadays, and this, it is to be feared, may also 
be said of those of Anna Letitia Barbauld, who, in the 
latter half of the eighteenth century, assisted her husband 
in the management of a somewhat famous boarding 
school at Palgrave, a small village about a mile south 
of Diss. Yet Mrs. Barbauld has been described as 
"one of the most classical, elegant, and useful writers 
of her time." But to-day her compilations "for the 
improvement of young ladies " are sadly neglected by 
those for whom they were especially intended, and as a 
writer she is chiefly remembered for her hymn in which, 
in describing the death of the virtuous, she has the 
lines — 

" So fades a summer cloud away ; 

So sinks the gale when storms are o'er ; 

So gently shuts the eye of day ; 

So dies a wave along the shore." 



THE WAVENEY VALLEY 243 

But it must not be forgotten that she was the editor of 
the " Letters " of the noveHst Richardson ; nor that 
Wordsworth is said to have coveted her lines — 

" Life, I know not what thou art, 
But know that thou and I must part : 
And when or how and where we met 
I own to me is secret yet. 
Life ! we have been long together, 
Through pleasant and through cloudy weather ; 
'Tis hard to part when friends are dear ; 
Perhaps 'twill cost a sigh, a tear ; 
Then steal away, give little warning ; 

Choose thine own time, 

Say not ' Good night,' but in some brighter clime 

Bid me ' Good morning.' " 

The Barbaulds' school at Palgrave would have been a 
far from flourishing institution had it not been for 
Anna Barbauld's peculiar fitness for managing and 
instructing boys ; but thanks to her it soon attained a 
considerable reputation. Among its scholars were the 
first Lord Denman, Chief Justice of the Queen's Bench ; 
Sir William Gell, the antiquary ; Dr. Sayers, who, as 
Sir Walter Scott said, "united the patience of the 
antiquarian with the genius of the poet " ; and William 
Taylor, to whom his old school-mistress afterwards 
wrote, "Do you know that you made Walter Scott a 
poet ? So he told me the other day. It was, he says, 
your ballad of ' Lenore ' that inspired him." But at least 
one contemporary valuation of Mrs. Barbauld's abilities 
as an educationalist was an exceedingly low one. 

" Knowledge insignificant and vapid as Mrs. Bar- 
bauld's books convey, it seems," wrote Charles Lamb, 
"must come to a child in the sliape of knozvledge ; and 



244 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

his empty noddle must be turned with conceit of his 
own powers when he has learnt that a horse is an 
animal, and Billy is better than a horse, and such like ; 
instead of that beautiful interest in wild tales, which 
made the child a man, while all the time he suspected 
himself to be no bigger than a child. . . . Hang them ! 
I mean the cursed Barbauld crew, those blights and 
blasts of all that is human in man and child." 



CHAPTER XV 

BURY ST. EDMUNDS 

St. Edmundsbury — Monastic times — Jocelin of Brakelond — A 
"born Boswell" — ^Abbot Samson- - King John — The Abbot and 
King Richard — John Lydgate — His acquaintance with Chaucer — 
His poems — Gray's estimate of Lydgate — James Russell Lowell 
— Matthew Hopkins the " witch-finder " — The Lowestoft witches — 
Sir Thomas Browne brings about their execution — Daniel Defoe — 
Buiy Fair — Cox Macro — Messenger Monsey. 

THERE still clings to the ancient town of St. 
Edmundsbury something of that atmosphere of 
cloistral calm and gothic gravity which befits a place 
owing its historical importance to monastic influence, 
and a large part of its abiding charm and interest to the 
associations with it of quiet, studious men who spent 
here reclusive lives. Its magnificent and richly-endowed 
abbey has for centuries been represented by little more 
than two well-preserved gateways and some almost 
shapeless fragments of crumbling walls, and the 
supposed miraculous events by which the shrine of East 
Anglia's Martyr-King became widely renowned have 
long since come to be treated as idle tales ; but the 
story of St. Edmundsbury's past has an irresistible 
fascination, and the town itself retains a sufficing 
measure of its mediaeval tranquillity to preserve for 
it a harmonious relationship with its past. In its 
Abbey Grounds, still partly surrounded by their original 

245 



246 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

wall, a Hugh de Northwold might plan undisturbed 
just such another beautiful presbytery as he built at 
Ely ; by the side of the little river Lark a Lydgate 
might woo the muse of poetry with little fear of interrup- 
tion. For now, as ever. Bury is a self-centred, self- 
reliant town. Contentedly, it devotes itself to its own 
interests, but lags in the wake of progress. The chief 
town of West Suffolk, it has no ambition to wider 
distinction than its past has given it and its present 
maintains ; consequently, we find it more concerned 
about the precise location of an abbot's tomb than in 
schemes of modern improvement. We feel while walk- 
ing its streets and loitering amid its Abbey ruins that 
the influence of its monkish rulers has not yet ceased to 
be exerted in it — that the Bury St. Edmunds of to-day 
is still the St. Edmundsbury of monastic times. 

In inquiring into the early literary associations of 
Bury, it is useless to seek them elsewhere than in con- 
nection with the famous Benedictine monastery. That 
wealthy religious house numbered among its inmates, at 
one time or another, several distinguished men ; but the 
names of two of its monks, Jocelin of Brakelond and 
John Lydgate, stand out far more boldly than the 
rest, save that of Abbot Samson, whom Jocelin has 
immortalised. Yet even the name of Jocelin was almost 
unknown, save to a few students and historians, until 
1843, when Carlyle, having seized upon a gossipy yet 
invaluable chronicle, embodied the greater part of it in 
his " Past and Present." Previously, John Gage Roke- 
wode had printed, through the Camden Society, the 
text of the Chronicle in the original Latin, and it was of 
this edition Carlyle made such good use ; but the 



BURY ST. EDMUNDS 247 

publication of " Past and Present " awakened so great 
an interest in the Bury monk and the sturdy Abbot 
Samson, whose biographer he was, that an English 
version was at once called for, and was provided by 
Thomas Edlyne Tomlins. Since then another trans- 
lation, with valuable notes, has been issued by Sir 
Ernest Clarke, and the " Chronicle of Jocelin of Brake- 
lond " is now well within the reach of every reader who 
may care to make the acquaintance of Jocelin and get 
a glimpse into the inner life of a famous monastery. 

There are many monkish chronicles, but only a few 
of them are so written as to be attractive to the general 
reader of to-day ; most of them are matter for the 
antiquary and historian alone. The popularity of 
Jocelin is partly due to his own personality and partly 
to the striking and masterful personality of the Abbot 
with whose sayings and doings the Chronicle is chiefly 
concerned. Carlyle speaks of Jocelin as a " born 
Boswell," a terse description of him which in itself is 
enough to make us turn to him with some eagerness ; 
but he also gives us a shrewd estimate of the monk's 
character : " An ingenious and ingenuous, a cheery- 
hearted, innocent, yet withal shrewd, noticing, quick- 
witted man ; and from under his monk's cowl has looked 
out on the narrow section of the world in a really 
human manner. . . . The man is of patient, peaceable, 
loving, clear-smiling nature ; open for this or that. . . . 
Also he has a pleasant wit, and loves a timely joke, 
though in mild, subdued manner. A learned, grown 
man, yet with the heart as of a good child." 

There is every probability that Jocelin of Brakelond 
was a native of Bury, where there are still two streets 



248 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

known as Long and Short Brackland or Braklond ; but 
we know nothing of his life before 1173, when he 
became a monk of St. Edmundsbury, and was taken 
charge of by Samson, then master of the novices. By 
the time that Samson was elected Abbot, Jocelin had 
become prior's chaplain ; but before the new Abbot had 
been four months in office he made the chronicler his 
chaplain. After the death of Samson, we hear of 
Jocelin as "our almoner, a man of exalted piety, power- 
ful in word and in deed " ; and he appears to have taken 
a prominent part in the discussions which preceded the 
appointment of a new abbot ; but apart from a remark 
he makes to the effect that he had written an account 
of the signs and wonders which followed the martyrdom 
of the boy Robert by the Jews, he tells us practically 
nothing about himself, though we are justified in assum- 
ing that he was a quiet-loving man, without ambition, 
unless it was to win the praise of future generations. 

That the description "born Boswell," or "Jocelin 
Boswell " was aptly applied to our chronicler by Carlyle 
is easily appreciated when we read passages like that in 
which he relates how he complained one day to Abbot 
Samson that he showed a far more amiable side of his 
character to people whom he met abroad than to those 
with whom he dwelt in the monastery. 

" ' When you are at home,' said Jocelin, ' you do not 
exhibit the same gracious demeanour you do when else- 
where, nor do you mix in society with those brethren 
who have a strong regard for you, and have chosen you 
for their lord ; but contrariwise, you seldom associate 
with them, nor do you, as they say, make yourself on 
sociable terms with them.' Hearing this, he changed 



BURY ST. EDMUNDS 249 

countenance, and, hanging down his head, said 'You 
are a simpleton, and speak foolishly ; you ought to 
know what Solomon says — " You have many sons : it is 
not fit you should smile on them ! " ' I indeed held my 
peace from thenceforth, putting a bridle on my tongue. 
On another occasion I said, ' My lord, I heard thee this 
night after matins wakeful and sighing heavily, contrary 
to thy usual wont,' who answered, ' No wonder ; thou 
art partaker of my good things, in meat and drink, in 
riding abroad, and such like, but you have little need 
to care concerning the conduct of the house and house- 
hold of the saints, and arduous business of the pastoral 
care which harasses me and makes my spirit to groan 
and be heavy.' Whereto I, lifting up my hands to 
heaven, made answer, ' From such anxiety, almighty 
and most merciful Lord, deliver me.' " 

But much as Jocelin tells us, both about the abbot 
and the abbey affairs, it must be admitted that Carlyle 
is right in saying that he is an imperfect mirror of 
the monastic life of his time. He chats complacently 
about what pleases or interests him ; but too often he 
is utterly negligent of what will interest the reader of 
his Chronicle seven hundred years after he has laid 
the pen aside and left the scriptorium for ever. As 
Carlyle says, " We have a longing always to cross- 
question him, to force from him an explanation of 
much." So in the second book of " Past and Present," 
in which there is so much inspired by him, we find 
Carlyle filling in the blank spaces he discovers in the 
old Chronicle, or at least doing his best to read 
between the lines. 

"Those clear eyes of neighbour Jocelin," he says, 
" looked on the bodily presence of King John : the very 



250 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

John Sansterre, or Lackland, who signed Magna Charta 
afterwards at Runnymead. Lackland, with a great 
retinue, boarded once, for the matter of a fortnight, in 
St. Edmundsbury Convent ; daily in the very eyesight, 
palpable to the very fingers of our Jocelin : O Jocelin, 
what did he say, what did he do ; how looked he, 
lived he; — at the very lowest, what coat or breeches 
had he on? Jocelin is obstinately silent. Jocelin 
marks down what interests him; entirely deaf to us. 
With Jocelin's eyes we discern almost nothing of John 
Lackland. As through a glass darkly, we with our 
own eyes and appliances, intensely looking, discern at 
most : A blustering, dissipated human figure, with a 
kind of blackguardly quality air, in cramoisy velvet, 
or other uncertain texture, uncertain cut, with much 
plumage and fringing ; amid numerous other human 
figures of the like ; riding abroad with hawks ; talking 
noisy nonsense; — tearing out the bowels of St. Edmunds- 
bury Convent (its larders, namely, and cellars) in the 
most ruinous way, by living at rack and manger there. 
Jocelin notes only, with a slight subacidity of manner, 
that the King's Majesty, Dominus Rex, did leave, as 
gift for our St. Edmund Shrine, a handsome enough 
silk cloak, — or rather pretended to leave, for one of his 
retinue borrowed it of us, and zve never got sight of 
it again ; and, on the whole, that the Domimis Rex, 
at departing, gave us 'thirteen sterlingii' one shilling 
and one penny, to say a mass for him ; and so departed, 
— like a shabby Lackland as he was ! " 



But in writing of what interested him, Jocelin is 
never neglectful of details, even to the extent of noting 
the prominence of St. Edmund's nose and the number 
of nails by which the lid of his coffin was fastened 
down ; and however quickly he may dismiss from his 
mind the visit of a John Lackland, he ever delights 



BURY ST. EDMUNDS 251 

in recording the sayings and doings of his hero, the 
Abbot. To quote Carlyle again — 

" How Abbot Samson, giving his new subjects 
seriatim the kiss of fatherhood in the St. Edmundsbury 
chapterhouse, proceeded with cautious energy to set 
about reforming their disjointed, distracted way of life ; 
how he managed with his fifty rough Milites (Feudal 
Knights), with his lazy farmers, remiss refractory monks, 
with Pope's Legates, Viscounts, Bishops, Kings ; how 
on all sides he laid about him like a man, and putting 
consequence on premiss, and everywhere the saddle on 
the right horse, struggled incessantly to educe organic 
method out of lazily fermenting wreck, — the careful 
reader will discern, not without true interest, in these 
pages of Jocelin Boswell." 

And Abbot Samson was well worthy of his chronicler, 
as might be easily proved, were not the fact well estab- 
lished, and we not concerned here with other matters. 
He was a " strong " man in the best sense of the word, 
and in taking leave of Jocelin of Brakelond, that most 
reliable of chroniclers, we can hardly do better than 
quote, as an example of his style, his account of Abbot 
Samson's way of dealing with a king — 

"Adam of Cockfield dying, left for his heir a 
daughter of three months old ; and the abbot gave the 
wardship as belonging to his fee, to whom he would. 
Now King Richard, being solicited by some of his 
courtiers, anxiously sought for the wardship and the 
child for the use of some one of his servants ; at one 
time by letter, at another time by messengers. But 
the abbot answered that he had given the ward away, 
and had confirmed his gift by his charter ; and sending 
his own messenger to the King, he did all he could, 
prece et precio, to mitigate his wrath. And the King 



252 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

made answer that he would avenge himself upon that 
proud abbot who had thwarted him, were it not for 
reverence of St. Edmund, whom he feared. Therefore, 
the messenger returning, the abbot very wisely passed 
over the King's threats without notice, and said, 'Let 
the King send, if he will, and seize the ward; he has 
the strength and power of doing his will, indeed of 
taking away the whole abbey. I shall never be bent 
to his will in this matter, nor by me shall this ever 
be done. For the thing that is most to be apprehended 
is, lest such things by consequence be drawn to the 
prejudice of my successors. On this business, depend 
upon it, I will give the King no money. Let the Lord 
Most High look to it. Whatever may befall, I will 
patiently bear with.' Now, therefore, many were saying 
and beHeving that the King was exasperated against 
the abbot ; but lo ! the King wrote quite in a friendly 
way to the abbot, and requested that he would give 
him some of his dogs. The abbot, not unmindful of 
that saying of the wise man — 

' Munera (crede mihi) capiunt hominesque deosque 
Placatur donis Jupiter ipse datis,' 

sent the dogs as the King requested, and moreover, 
sent some horses and other valuable gifts, which, when 
the King had graciously accepted, he in public most 
highly commended the honesty and fidelity of the 
abbot, and also sent to the abbot by his messengers 
a ring of great price, which our lord the Pope, Innocent 
the Third, of his great grace had given him, to wit, 
being the very first gift that had been offered after his 
consecration. Also, by his writ, he rendered him many 
thanks for the presents he had sent him." 

Just over two hundred years after Jocelin of Brake- 
lond was admitted as a novice into the monastery of 
St. Edmundsbury, there was born at Lydgate, a village 



BURY ST. EDMUNDS 253 

about six miles from Bury, one who was also destined 
to become a Benedictine of the famous abbey and to 
distinguish himself more than any other monk who 
ever dwelt within its walls. This was John of Lidgate 
or John Lydgate, who himself tells us in his " Fall of 
Princes," that he was — 

" Born in a village which is called Lidgate 
In olden times a famous castle town 
In Danes times it was beaten down 
Time when St. Edmund Martyr Maid and King 
Was slain at Hoxne." 

Unlike Jocelin, who wrote for posterity alone, John 
Lydgate received in his lifetime the due reward of his 
labours ; for he was a popular poet of his day, and had 
the advantage of the assistance of Caxton in bringing 
his works before the public. He had, too, the advantage 
of travel ; for, after spending a short time at Oxford, 
he visited France, and, possibly, Italy, and acquainted 
himself with their languages and literature, making a 
special study of Dante and Boccaccio, though, according 
to Mr. Sidney Lee, his foreign tours seem to have been 
undertaken rather " in the spirit of an adventurous 
sightseer than in the pursuit of academic learning." 

Lydgate began rhyming at an early age, and it was 
not long before he became personally acquainted with 
Chaucer, whose disciple he called himself, and to whom 
he submitted his poems in manuscript so long as the 
poet was able to peruse them. He was admitted to 
the Abbey of St. Edmundsbury when only fifteen years 
old ; so it would seem that, notwithstanding his being, 
as he tells us, an unruly boy who preferred robbing 



254 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

orchards and " telling " cherry stones to going to church, 
he must early have revealed himself exceptionally gifted. 
Shortly after his return from abroad, he opened a school, 
probably in the abbey, for the sons of noblemen ; and 
subsequently he distinguished himself as a teacher of 
mathematics, astronomy, and rhetoric. But his fame 
chiefly rested on his poetical works, the most popular 
of which was his " History, Siege and Destruction of 
Troy," which was undertaken at the command of 
Henry IV., but, owing to its not being completed until 
after that king's death, dedicated to his successor 
Henry V. The manuscript copy of this poem, which 
was presented to the King, is now in the Bodleian 
Library. Almost equally popular was his " Fall of 
Thebes," which was written in continuation of Chaucer's 
" Canterbury Tales," and is printed at the end of old 
editions of that work. To the inhabitants of Bury his 
most interesting poem is his " Life of St. Edmund," 
which contains, in addition to the legendary life of the 
Martyr King, a history of the abbey, a description of 
the famous shrine, and a regular enumeration of the 
abbots, with remarks on each. The manuscript copy 
of this poem is in the British Museum. It was pre- 
sented by Lydgate to Henry VI., and is one of the 
most beautiful manuscripts of that and any other 
period. It is written on vellum and splendidly illumi- 
nated, having no less than one hundred and twenty 
limnings in rich and exquisite colours. In the British 
Museum is also preserved a splendid manuscript copy 
of Lydgate's " Fall of Princes," illustrated with a portrait 
of the author and several miniatures. 

There have been many and various estimates made 



BURY ST. EDMUNDS 255 

of Lydgate's poetical skill. One of his greatest ad- 
mirers was the poet Gray, who said of him — 

" I pretend not to set him on a level with Chaucer, 
but he certainly comes the nearest to him of any con- 
temporary writer I am acquainted with. His choice of 
expression, and the smoothness of his verse, far surpass 
both Gower and Occleve. He wanted not art in raising 
the more tender emotions of the mind." 

Against this estimate we have that of Ritson, 
who found Lydgate "a most prolix and voluminous 
poetaster," and elsewhere describes him as a " prosaic 
and drivelling monk." The late James Russell Lowell, 
too, in writing of Chaucer, declares that in order to 
understand fully how much he achieved, one should 
subject one's self to a ** penitential course " of his con- 
temporary Gower, or listen for a moment to the " bar- 
barous jangle which Lydgate and Occleve contrive to 
draw from the instrument their master had tuned so 
deftly." Chaucer's verse, he adds, " differs from that 
of Gower and Lydgate precisely as the verse of Spenser 
differs from that of Gascoigne, and for the same reason 
— that he was a great poet, to whom measure was a 
natural vehicle." Between these very different appraise- 
ments, we m.ay perhaps find the truth in that of Mr. 
Sidney Lee, who writes — 

" The tedious length of his narrative poems renders 
them unreadable, and, from a literary point of view, 
worthless. His moralising, usually in allegorical form, 
is unimpressive, although the piety which inspires it 
is obviously sincere. He shows to best advantage in 
his shorter poems on social subjects, like ' London Lack- 
penny ' or the ballad on the 'Forked Headdresses of the 



256 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

Ladies ' (* A dyte on Womenhis hornys '), or ' A Satirical 
Description of his Lady when she hath on Hire Hood of 
Grene.' There occasionally he exhibits a frolicsome 
vein of satire, as well as an insight into the weaknesses 
of human nature. Elsewhere he shows some sympathy 
with rural life and natural scenery, and although he 
delights in exposing women's foibles, he refers to them 
in his serious poems in terms of genuine respect. De- 
spite the depression which all but a small fragment of 
his literary work excites in the reader, Lydgate may 
fairly be credited with a genial personality." 

A few years ago antiquarian inquisitiveness, directed 
towards the site of the chapter-house of the abbey, 
resulted in the disturbance of the bones of six of the 
abbots of St. Edmundsbury, including those of the 
famous Samson ; but the graves of Jocelin and Lydgate, 
though probably somewhere within the "botanic ex- 
panses," as Carlyle called them, of the abbey grounds, 
have never been intentionally disturbed, for their posi- 
tion is unknown. But fragments of the grand old 
abbey remain, and with them the names of Jocelin and 
Lydgate will be associated so long as one stone rests 
upon another ; for among the many shadowy forms 
we dimly see when we peer into the early history of 
St. Edmundsbury these two monks stand out more 
clearly than the rest by reason of their works, in which 
they have shown us something of themselves as well 
as of their times. 

Some three hundred years after Lydgate's death, 
when Edmund Calamy, the celebrated divine, was the 
" preacher " in St. Mary's Church, which stands south of 
the Norman tower, Matthew Hopkins, the scoundrelly 
"witch-finder," brought to Bury, from all parts of the 



BURY ST. EDMUNDS 257 

neighbourhood, a number of unfortunate persons who 
were reputed to be wizards or witches ; and not a few 
of these unfortunates were condemned by certain com- 
missioners (of whom Calamy was one), and suffered 
death for their supposed iniquities. Subsequently these 
proceedings, worthy of a Zulu witch-doctor, were mode- 
rated in consequence of the exposure of Hopkins's 
fraudulent practices ; but even so late as 1664 there 
were tried at Bury, on a charge of witchcraft, two poor 
women from Lowestoft, Amy Duny and Rose Cul- 
lender by name, and the judge on that occasion was 
Sir Matthew Hale, the Lord Chief Baron of the Ex- 
chequer. In the opinion of certain ignorant folk, these 
women had, with evil intent, bewitched some children ; 
but it is only fair to the judge to say that he appears 
to have had grave doubts on the subject. Unfortunately, 
however, there happened to be staying in Bury at the 
time no less a celebrity than Sir Thomas Browne, the 
author of " Religio Medici " ; and while the trial was 
in progress he was present in the court. Not being 
satisfied with the evidence, Sir Matthew Hale requested 
Sir Thomas Browne, as " a person of great knowledge," 
to state his opinion of it ; and, having examined the 
children who were said to have been the women's 
victims, Sir Thomas gravely asserted that he had no 
doubt about their being bewitched. 

"In Denmark," he added, "there had lately been a 
great discovery of witches, who used the very same 
way of afflicting persons by conveying pins into them, 
and crooked, as these pins were, with needles and nails. 
And his opinion was that the devil in such cases did 
work upon the bodies of men and women, upon a 



258 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

natural foundation, that is, to stir up and excite such 
humours superabounding in their bodies to a great 
excess, whereby he did in an extraordinary manner 
afflict them with such distempers as their bodies were 
most subject to, as particularly appeared in these chil- 
dren ; for he conceived that these swouning fits were 
natural, and nothing else but they call the mother, but 
only heightened to a great excess by the subtility of 
the devil, co-operating with the malice of these which 
we term witches, at whose instance he doth these 
villanies." 

These statements, backed by the reputation of the 
unexpected witness, settled the fate of Amy Duny and 
Rose Cullender, who were condemned and executed. 
That their blood is upon the head of the worthy 
Norwich doctor and scholar no one can deny; but it 
must be remembered that, in believing in the existence 
of witchcraft, Browne's credulity was no greater than 
that of nearly all learned men of his day. The general 
belief regarding it was clearly stated by Hale in his 
direction to the jury. He said — 

" That there were such creatures as witches he made 
no doubt at all. First, the Scripture had affirmed so 
much. Secondly, the wisdom of all nations had pro- 
vided laws against such persons, which is an argument 
of their confidence in such a crime." 

Nearly forty years after a casual visit of Sir Thomas 
Browne to Bury had had such terrible consequences for 
the two reputed witches, the ancient monastic town enter- 
tained for a while a famous personage in that popular 
romancer and pugnacious pamphleteer, Daniel Defoe, 
then only recently released from Newgate, where he 



BURY ST. EDMUNDS 259 

had been imprisoned for publishing his " Shortest Way 
with the Dissenters." Local tradition points to a house, 
called Cupola House, on the east side of the Meat 
Market, as having been occupied by him ; but there 
is no trustworthy record of this, and it is probable that 
his name has been confused with that of Dr. Cox Macro, 
the antiquary, who is known to have lived in the house. 
Defoe, who during his stay in Bury attended services 
conducted by the Presbyterians in a room in Abbeygate 
Street, was much delighted with the town and townsfolk. 

" It is a town," he wrote, " famed for its pleasant 
situation and wholesome air, the Montpelier of Suffolk, 
and perhaps of England;" but, he adds, "the beauty 
of this town consists in the number of gentry who 
dwell in and near it, the polite conversation among 
them, the afifluence and plenty they live in, and the 
pleasant country they have to go abroad in." 

He was very indignant that a recent writer should 
have attempted to besmirch the fair fame of the ladies 
of Bury and its neighbourhood by suggesting that they 
went to Bury Fair as to a matrimonial market, and 
that the assemblies held during the Fair seldom ended 
"without some considerable match or intrigue." He 
admitted that he did not like the assemblies ; but that 
the women who attended them deserved the "terrible 
character " given them he could not believe. 

" Having the opportunity to see the fair at Bury," 
he wrote, " and to see that there were, indeed, abund- 
ance of the finest ladies, or as fine as any in Britain, 
yet I must own that the number of the ladies at the 
comedy, or at the assembly, is in no way equal to the 
number that are seen in the town, much less are they 



260 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

equal to the whole body of the ladies in the three 
counties ; and I must also add, that though it is far 
from true that all that appear at the assembly are there 
for matches or intrigues, yet I will venture to say that 
they are not the worst of the ladies who stay away, 
neither are they the fewest in number or the meanest 
in beauty, but just the contrary ; and I do not at all 
doubt but that the scandalous liberty some take at 
those assemblies will in time bring them out of credit 
with the virtuous part of the sex here, as it has done 
already in Kent and other places, and that those ladies 
who most value their reputation will be seen less there 
than they have been ; for though the institution of 
them has been innocent and virtuous, the ill use of 
them will in time arm virtue against them, and they 
will be laid down as they have been set up without 
much satisfaction." 

Cox Macro, who was an alderman of the borough, 
was a great collector of curiosities and old manuscripts, 
among the latter being several which formerly belonged 
to Sir Henry Spelman, the Elizabethan antiquary, and 
to the library of the Abbey of St. Edmundsbury. Some 
of these are now in the possession of Mr. J. H. Gurney, 
of Keswick, and are described in a report of the 
Historical Manuscripts Commission. Macro was in 
frequent correspondence with eminent literary men 
and artists of his day, and a collection of his letters 
is preserved in the British Museum. His rather curious 
name was a frequent occasion of witticisms on the part 
of his friends, one of whom suggested as an appropriate 
motto for his family, "Cocks may crow." Contem- 
porary with him was the eccentric Messenger Monsey, 
the freethinking Whig physician, who for a while 
occupied the Manor House. It was while he was living 



BURY ST. EDMUNDS 261 

in Bury that he was fortunate enough to be called in 
to attend the Earl of Godolphin, who induced him to 
go to London, where he became a friend of Garrick 
and Elizabeth Montagu, but failed to find favour in 
the eyes of Dr. Johnson, who greatly disapproved of 
his " loose style of conversation." 



CHAPTER XVI 

BURY ST. BBMUNBS— continued 

Bury Grammar School — Its distinguished scholars — Dr. 
Donaldson — Crabb Robinson — Dr. Gordon Hake — William 
Bodham Donne — His removal to Bury— Entertains Borrow — 
Borrow and Donaldson — " Hebrew in five minutes " — Gordon 
Hake and Borrow — " The Romany Rye " — FitzGerald at Bury — 
FitzGerald and Borrow — Borrow and Agnes Strickland — Thackeray 
and Borrow at Hardwick — FitzGerald's last visit to Bury — The 
Angel Inn — Mr. Pickwick and Alfred Jingle— Mr. Pickwick's 
adventure at the young ladies' school — Henry Cockton — Madame 
de Genlis — Fanny Burney — Elizabeth Inchbald. 

BURY Grammar School, now conducted in an im- 
posing building standing on the site of the Abbey 
vineyard, has a high reputation, owing to the consider- 
able number of distinguished men who have been 
included among its scholars ; but the schoolhouse, which 
was so well remembered by its " old boys," is a long old 
building in Northgate Street, now used as a girls' school. 
In this schoolhouse — into which the school was removed 
in 1665 and there conducted until 1883 — were educated, 
during the eighteenth century. Sir Thomas Hanmer, the 
first editor of Shakespeare ; Cumberland, the author 
of " The Observer " ; and G. Pretyman Tomline, Bishop 
of Winchester, the tutor and biographer of Pitt ; while 
other scholars who subsequently distinguished them- 
selves were Bunbury the caricaturist, Laurence Brockett 

262 






m 



M 
■ M 
■• ■■ 








■^Ki 



I 



BURY GRAMMAR SCHOOL 

WHERE EDWARn FITZGKRALP WAS A SCHOLAR 



BURY ST. EDMUNDS 263 

and Dr. Symonds, both of whom occupied the chair of 
Modern History at Cambridge ; and Butts and Thurlow, 
bishops respectively of Ely and Durham. During the 
earlier half of the nineteenth century the school's 
reputation was well maintained, especially under the 
headmastership of Dr. B. H. Malkin and the famous 
Dr. J. W. Donaldson, author of " Theatre of the Greeks." 
Then it was that those firm friends and variously gifted 
men, J. M. Kemble, the historian of the Anglo-Saxons ; 
James Spedding, the editor of Bacon ; William Bodham 
Donne, the licenser of plays ; and Edward FitzGerald, of 
" Omar Khayyam " fame, were boys together at the old 
Bury school, as was also FitzGerald's brother Peter, 
who chiefly distinguished himself by driving the Bury 
coach and, on one occasion, a hearse with four horses. 
Dr. Malkin, to whom there is a monument in St. James's 
Church, is not so well remembered, perhaps, as his sons, 
Frederick, the historian of Greece, and Sir Benjamin 
Heath Malkin, the friend of Macaulay ; but the name 
of Dr. Donaldson is even now frequently on the tongue 
of certain Bury folk, who, pointing to some memorial 
inscriptions on the ruins in one of the churchyards, love 
to tell that tale of him which is told in the " Life " of 
Henry Crabb Robinson. The tale is to the effect that 
there were in Bury three brothers of the name of Creed, 
and they were commonly known as " the three Creeds." 
Crabb Robinson was strolling with Donaldson in the 
town one day, when one of the brothers was seen walk- 
ing in front of them with his hands behind his back. 
"There goes Athanasian Creed," remarked the doctor. 
" How do you know ? " asked his companion. " Why, 
by his damnation claws (clause)." 



264 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

Dr. Gordon Hake, who, like Lamb's friend Crabb 
Robinson, lived in Bury, knew Dr. Donaldson well, and 
in his " Memoirs of Eighty Years " has left us a striking 
pen-picture of him — 

"When I call up Donaldson's head and face," he 
writes, " and see a large, wide, overhanging forehead, 
big enough to be hydrocephalic, a forehead such as one 
meets with in cases of epilepsy and in cases of genius 
alike, I pause before criticizing its function ; and such 
was Donaldson's forehead, whilst his mouth was the 
mouth of Punch. Its laugh, almost always silent, 
seemed loud, and suppressed only to make it last the 
longer. There was more going on always under that 
forehead of his than in any half-dozen brains of the 
common type. Fortunate for him was it that the mental 
workings are inaudible, or he would have been stunned 
by his own thoughts ; so busy were they at all times 
and so noisy. He was a work of Nature, a thinking 
and sensitive machine, which, set going, must work on 
like the rapidest wheel moved by steam ; so rapid some- 
times as to acquire invisibility as it revolved before your 
eyes. The fly-wheel ... in him was vanity, and it 
never allowed its machinery to pause ; it was, therefore, 
quite impossible for it to ask itself if it went wrong 
when it never stopped. All Donaldson knew about 
right and wrong was that what he achieved was perfect 
. . . that, even if a little wrong, the reason was not 
quite within reach of vulgar scrutiny." 

William Bodham Donne, a quiet, scholarly man, 
better known to-day as a friend and correspondent of 
FitzGerald than as an author and critic, went back to 
his home at Mattishall in Norfolk after leaving Cam- 
bridge, and there married a niece of Cowper's "Johnny 
(Johnson) of Norfolk;" but in 1846 he moved into 



BURY ST. EDMUNDS 265 

Bury, where he lived in Westgate House, adjoining the 
Theatre in Westgate Street, and had a near neighbour 
in Crabb Robinson, whom he valued for himself as well 
as for his reminiscences of Wordsworth and Lamb. 
Writing to Trench, afterwards Archbishop of Dublin, a 
few days before leaving Mattishall, he referred to the 
great number of goods and chattels three generations 
of Donnes had accumulated there, and humorously 
added — 

" I am sure when the people at Bury see what I 
bring, they will set me down for a retired pawnbroker, 
and when the visitors of my auction see what I leave, 
they will think Noah is selling off his fixtures and 
furniture from the Ark." 

From 1846 until 1852, when Donne was appointed 
librarian of the London Library, his house in Westgate 
Street was often resorted to by well-known literary men, 
among whom were FitzGerald, Bernard Barton, and 
George Borrow. 

Borrow was the guest of Donne here in 1848, when 
the latter wrote to one of his friends — 

" We have had a great man here . . . and I have 
been walking with him and aiding him to eat salmon 
and mutton and drink port . . . George Borrow . . . 
and what is more we fell in with some gypsies, and I 
heard the speech of Egypt, which sounded wondrously 
like a medley of broken Spanish and dog Latin. 
Borrow's face, lighted up by the red turf fire of the tent, 
was worth looking at. He is ashy- white now . . . but 
twenty years ago, when his hair was like a raven's wing, 
he must have been hard to discriminate from a born 
Bohemian. Borrow is best on the tramp : if you can 



^66 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

walk 4^ miles per hour, as I can with ease and do by 
choice, and can walk 1 5 of them at a stretch . . . which 
I can compass also . . . then he will talk Iliads of 
adventures even better than his printed ones; He can- 
not abide those Amateur Pedestrians who saunter, and 
in his chair he is given to groan and be contradictory. 
But on Newmarket-heath, in Rougham Woods, he is at 
home, and specially when he meets with a thorough 
vagabond like your present correspondent." 



Donne undoubtedly had a way of keeping Borrow in 
a good humour, as had FitzGerald and Hake ; and if 
they laughed at his airs and eccentricities, it was behind 
his back. Mr. Mowbray Donne, who can remember 
Borrow's visits to his father's house, has said that the 
greater the man Borrow came in touch with the more 
rudely he behaved, and he records an encounter between 
him and Dr. Donaldson. The latter having expressed 
doubt as to whether a certain roving painter was, as he 
professed to be, a native of Hungary, Borrow settled the 
matter by saying that he had been talking with the 
painter for two hours that morning in the language of 
that country ; and then he suddenly turned to the learned 
doctor and said : " That comes. Dr. Donaldson, of laming 
Hebrew in five minutes." Commenting on this, Mr. 
Mowbray Donne pointedly asks, which of the two — 
Borrow or Donaldson — would have proved to be the 
better scholar could they there and then have been 
examined by a competent board of examiners ? 

About three years after Donne first met Borrow at 
Bury, Hake and Donne came to his rescue when, in 
consequence of some unfavourable notices, the publica- 
tion of his " Lavengro " seemed destined to be almost 



BURY ST. EDMUNDS 267 

ignored by the public. Hake had been greatly impressed 
by the book — " ' Lavengro's ' roots will strike deep into 
the soil of English letters," he wrote to a friend at the 
time — and he at once persuaded Ainsworth to let him 
eulogize Borrow in the " New Monthly " ; while Donne, 
in the pages of Tait's " Edinburgh Magazine," made a 
favourable estimate of the qualities of Borrow's " dream 
of adventure," and urged him to complete and publish 
speedily the concluding portion of the book, which 
appeared in 1857 under the title of "The Romany Rye." 
Writing to Mrs. Borrow from Bury in March, 185 1, 
Hake enclosed a proof of his article, and remarked upon 
it, "You are not to suppose from Mr. Ainsworth's notice 
that I have claimed any supernatural acquaintance with 
the facts of Mr. Borrow's life : it is a mere inference 
drawn from the character of my review and, perhaps, 
from my mention of Mr. Borrow being a friend of mine, 
which I hope is true ; — unless some day while walking 
he should stop as Petulengro did, and tell me I must 
fight — in which case I should come off second best ! " 
In describing Borrow as he knew him then, Dr. Hake 
says : " His figure was tall, and his bearing very noble ; 
he had a finely moulded head and thick white hair — 
white from his youth ; his brown eyes were soft yet 
piercing ; his nose somewhat of the 'Semitic' type, which 
gave his face the cast of the young Memnon. His 
mouth had a generous curve ; and his features, for 
beauty and true power, were such as can have no 
parallel in our portrait gallery." 

FitzGerald met Borrow at Donne's house in October, 
1856, and heard him read a long translation he had 
made from the Turkish. In return, FitzGerald lent him 



268 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

Cowell's manuscript of " Omar Khayyam " ; but he was 
not attracted by Borrow, who, we are told, " repelled 
him by his masterful manner and uncertain temper." 
Of his behaviour when he lost his temper, Dr. Hake has 
told us something in his " Memoirs," partly of his own 
knowledge and partly on the authority of Donne. One 
of the victims of his rudeness was Agnes Strickland, 
who hearing, while at a reception at Bury, that he was 
in the room, asked Donne to introduce him to her. 
Borrow unwillingly consented, and sat down beside her. 
Before long she began to praise his books, and asked 
him whether she might send him a copy of her " Queens 
of England." Her astonishment can be imagined when 
she received the reply, " For God's sake, don't, madame ; 
I should not know where to put them or what to do 
with them." Then " he rose, fuming, as was his wont 
when offended, and said to Mr. Donne, 'What a damned 
fool that woman is ! ' " 

On another occasion Borrow and Dr. Hake were 
dining at Hardwick House, the residence of Sir Thomas 
Cullum, a fine old seventeenth-century house, about a 
mile from Bury. Among the guests was Thackeray. 

" At that date," writes Dr. Hake, " Thackeray had 
made money by lectures on the Satirists, and was in 
good swing ; but he never could realize the independent 
feelings of those who happened to be born to fortune, 
a thing which a man of genius should be able to do 
with ease. He told Lady Cullum, which she repeated 
to me, that no one could conceive how it mortified him 
to be making a provision for his daughters by delivering 
lectures ; and I thought she rather sympathized with 
him in this his degradation. He approached Borrow, 
who, however, received him very dryly. As a last 



BURY ST. EDMUNDS 269 

attempt to get up a conversation with him, he said, 
'Have you read my Snob Papers in Punch V 'In 
Punch f ' asked Borrow. 'It is a periodical I never 
look at ! . . . Thackeray, as if under the impression 
that the party was invited to look at him, thought it 
necessary to make a figure, and absorb attention during 
the dessert, by telling stories and more than half acting 
them ; the aristocratic party listening, but appearing 
little amused. Borrow knew better how to behave in 
good company, and kept quiet ; though, doubtless, he 
felt his mane." 

The departure of Dr. Hake and W. Bodham Donne 
for London caused a break-up of the little literary 
coterie at Bury. No one regretted this more than 
FitzGerald, for Donne was one of his firmest friends. 

" If FitzGerald has become more attached to Bury, 
Bury so far as it knows him is equally attached to him," 
wrote Donne. " His company would make one in- 
different to a smoking chimney. His great fault is that 
he gives so little of it." 

Some time after Donne's departure, FitzGerald wrote 
to him : 

" W. Airy came over some ten days ago, and I after- 
wards went with him to have a long day's ramble over 
our old haunts al Bury, the school, the church, etc. I 
looked at your old house by the Theatre with some 
sadness ; and did not forget poor Donaldson in looking 
at the school." 

With the " old house by the Theatre " closed to him, 
FitzGerald usually, when he came to Bury, stayed at 
the Angel Inn, on Angel Hill, nearly opposite the 
Abbey Gate ; but on the occasion of his last visit to 



270 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

the town which had for him so many pleasant associa- 
tions, he had time only to stroll as far as the old school- 
house in Northgate Street, before continuing his journey 
to the rectory of his friend Crabbe at Merton, in 
Norfolk. It was the last walk he ever took ; for before 
the next day dawned he had "passed the door of 
Darkness through." 

The Angel Inn ! Every one in Suffolk knows the 
Angel Inn at Bury, and it is equally well known to 
a great many people outside Suffolk. Years ago, 
according to the annals of the Pickwick Club, it was 
known to that "gentleman of fortune," Mr. Alfred 
Jingle, who was responsible for no less a distinguished 
personage than Mr. Pickwick taking up his abode for a 
while beneath its roof. It was by the coach from 
Eatanswill (Ipswich) that Mr. Pickwick and the inimit- 
able Sam Weller, little recking of the trouble in store 
for them, entered Bury on a fine day in August. 

"The coach rattled through the well-paved streets 
of a handsome little town, of thriving and cleanly 
appearance, and stopped before a large inn situated in 
a wide open street, nearly facing the old abbey. 

" ' And this,' said Mr. Pickwick, looking up, * is the 
Angel. We alight here, Sam. But some caution is 
necessary. Order a private room, and do not mention 
my name. You understand ? ' " 

But neither Mr. Pickwick nor Sam understood the 
wiles of Mr. Alfred Jingle and the lachrymose Job 
Trotter, consequently the former was led into that 
surprising adventure at the young ladies' school con- 
ducted by Miss Tomkins at Westgate House — a house 
the reader can identify for himself, if he be inclined to 



BURY ST. EDMUNDS 271 

do so, for " You turn a little to the right when you get 
to the end of the town ; it stands by itself, some little 
distance off the high road, with the name on a brass 
plate on the gate." And he may also, if he be a great 
admirer of Mr. Pickwick, enter the Angel and look into 
the room in which that worthy gentleman pummelled the 
pillow and promised to inflict " personal chastisement " 
on Mr. Jingle, and in which, after recovering from the 
attack of rheumatism consequent on his midnight 
adventure in the grounds of Westgate House, he read 
to his friends Wardle and Trundle that affecting romance, 
" The Parish Clerk : a Tale of True Love." Indeed, 
Mr. Pickwick had good cause to remember his visit to 
the " good old Angel," as FitzGerald called it ; for it 
was here that he received that staggering communication 
from Messrs. Dodson and Fogg, informing him of their 
impending action against him on behalf of Mrs. Bardell ; 
and before he returned to town to give those designing 
attorneys the benefit of his opinion of them, his over- 
indulgence in a special kind of " Suffolk punch " resulted 
in his encountering the irate Captain Boldwig, and being 
incarcerated in a village pound. Dickens is said to 
have stayed at the Angel in his reporting days, and 
room No, II. is pointed out as that which he occupied. 

Scarcely less interesting than Mr. Pickwick's adven- 
tures to the last generation of readers of romance were 
those of Valentine Vox the Ventriloquist and Sylvester 
Sound the Somnambulist, two eccentric characters con- 
ceived by Henry Cockton, a writer who resided in Bury 
for some years. Concerning Cockton himself, very little 
is known, save that he was born in London in 1807, 
and, subsequent to his marriage at St. James's Church, 



272 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

Bury, sustained considerable pecuniary loss by entering 
into a malting speculation here, a business of which he 
was entirely ignorant. He died in 1853, and is buried 
in St. James's Churchyard — the monastic Cemetery of 
St. Edmund. No stone marks his grave ; but on the 
south-west corner of the ruins of the Charnel Chapel 
founded by Abbot John de Northwold, there is a 
memorial inscription on a tablet erected in 1884 by a 
few of his admirers. 

Adjoining the Angel Inn on the south side is an old 
house in which, in 1791, King Louis-Philippe, then a 
child, resided for a while, with his sister the Princess 
Adelaide d'Orleans, in the charge of no less a literary 
celebrity than Madame de Genlis. They came here 
from Bath, and, apparently, their lack of regard for 
what the Suffolk dames considered to be "the con- 
ventionalities " caused their conduct to be a good deal 
criticized. Among their acquaintances was the wife of 
the famous agriculturist, Arthur Young ; and, according 
to Fanny Burney, Mrs. Young and her daughter " gave 
a very unpleasant account of Madame de Genlis, or 
Madame de Sillery, or Brulart, as she is now called. 
They say she has established herself at Bury, in their 
neighbourhood, with Mademoiselle la Princesse d'Orleans 
and Pamela " (Madame de Genlis' adopted child) " and 
a circe (Henrietta Sarcey), another young girl under her 
care. They have taken a house, the master of which 
always dines with them, though Mrs. Young says he is 
such a low man he should not dine with her daughter. 
They form twenty with themselves and household. 
They keep a botanist, a chemist, and a natural historian 
always with them. These are supposed to have been 



BURY ST. EDMUNDS 273 

common servants of the Duke of Orleans in former 
days, as they always walk behind the ladies abroad ; 
but to make amends in the new equalizing style, they all 
dine together at home. They visit at no house but Sir 
Thomas Gage's, where they carry harps, and frequently 
have music. They have been to a Bury ball, and danced 
all night ; Mademoiselle d'Orleans with anybody known 
or unknown to Madame Brulart." From Mr. Austin 
Dobson, however, we learn that even if, in the opinion 
of certain busy-bodies, Madame de Genlis and her 
charges associated too freely with the hospitable Bury 
folk, it was not because they were neglected, in their 
retirement, either by the leading families of the county 
or by famous men of the day. Mr. Howard, afterwards 
Duke of Norfolk, and Mr. Hervey, afterwards Lord 
Bristol, were among their acquaintances, and they were 
visited by Windham, Fox, and Sheridan, " the latter 
having possibly some subordinate intention of flirting 
with Pamela, whom he undoubtedly admired, although, 
Mr. Moore infers, it is impossible that he offered to 
marry her, as Madame de Genlis would have us believe. 
Besides, it was only during her stay at Bury that he 
had lost Mrs. Sheridan, to whom he was greatly 
attached." 

Unfortunately, we cannot be certain whether it was 
at the Angel Hill house or another, Sy, Whiting Street, 
to which Madame de Genlis afterwards removed, that 
Sheridan worshipped at the feet of the fair Pamela ; but 
the mention of his name reminds us that Elizabeth Inch- 
bald, whom he declared to be the only authoress whose 
society pleased him, must often have walked these Bury 
streets, for she was born in the neighbouring parish of 

T 



274 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

Stanningfield, where her father, John Simpson, was a 
farmer, and whenever there were theatrical companies 
performing at the Bury Theatre, she was almost sure to 
be one of the audience. What was the consequence of 
all this playgoing — how she ran away from home in 
order to become an actress — will be remembered by 
every one who has read the story of Mrs. Inchbald's 
romantic career. 



CHAPTER XVII 

BARTON AND HAWSTEAD 

Coleridge at Bury — Charles Lamb — His visit to Fornham — His 
coaching journey — Lamb's acrostics — Barton Hall — The Bunburys 
— Henry W. Bunbury — Oliver Goldsmith at Barton — Christmas at 
Barton — Goldsmith a general favourite — His mishaps — 'Hawstead — 
Joseph Hall — Hall and the atheist — Hall's marriage — His "Medita- 
tions" — "A good book" — "The owl" — The parsimony of Hall's 
patron — Hall leaves Hawstead. 

THROUGH the medium of Henry Crabb Robinson, 
who was a connecting link between the little 
literary coterie at Bury already referred to and that 
London circle of poets, playwrights, and cranks to which 
Charles Lamb belonged, Lamb, in all probability, first 
learnt of the existence of such a place as Bury, and 
when Samuel Taylor Coleridge came here on a visit, 
the name of the place, like that of another Suffolk town, 
Bungay,^ moved Lamb to communicate to a corre- 
spondent a rather feeble witticism. 

" Coleridge," he wrote, " is not so bad as your fears 
have represented him : it is true he is Bury'd, although 
he is not dead ; to understand this quibble you must 
know that he is at Bury St. Edmunds, relaxing after 
the fatigues of lecturing and Londonising." 

Earlier than this, however, Lamb may have been 
reminded of Bury as the birthplace of Capel Loftt, 

1 See p. 229. 

275 



276 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

who, to his disgust, occasionally printed sonnets over 
the initials " C. L." 

"That Manchester sonnet," he wrote to Coleridge, 
" I think very likely is Capel Lofft's. Another sonnet 
appeared with the same initials in the same paper, 
which turned out to be Procter's. What do the rascals 
mean ? Am I to have the fathering of what idle rhymes 
every beggarly poetaster pours forth ? " 

Capel Lofft is best remembered as the friend and 
patron of Robert Bloomfield, the Suffolk peasant-poet, 
who was another of Lamb's pet aversions. 

" You ask me about the * Farmer's Boy,' " he wrote 
to Manning. " Don't you think the fellow who wrote it 
(who is a shoemaker) has a poor mind ? Don't you find 
he is always silly about poor Giles, and those abject kind 
of phrases, which mark a man that looks up to wealth ? 
None of Burns's poet dignity. What do you think ? I 
have just opened him ; but he makes me sick. Dyer 
knows the shoemaker, a damn'd stupid hound in 
company ; but George promises to introduce him in- 
discriminately to all his friends." 

Lord Byron, in a footnote to his lines on Bloomfield 
and other "tuneful cobblers," refers to Lofft as "the 
Maecenas of shoemakers, and preface-writer-general to 
distressed versemen : a kind of gratis accoucher to those 
who wish to be delivered of rhyme, but do not know 
how to bring forth." 

Early in the year 1830, Lamb himself saw the 
venerable town of Bury, as he passed through it on his 
way to and from the rectory at Fornham, where he 
went to see, and bring to his home at Enfield, his 
adopted daughter Emma Isola, who had been suffering 



BARTON AND HAWSTEAD 277 

from illness. It was in the course of their journey from 
Fornham that Lamb had his famous encounter with the 
" rather talkative gentleman " who kept him in discourse 
for quite twenty miles of the journey. 

For full twenty minutes they discussed the " probable 
advantages of steam carriages," which, wrote Lamb to 
Mrs. Williams, the wife of the rector of Fornham, " being 
merely problematical, I bore my part in with some 
credit, in spite of my totally unengineer-like faculties. 
But when somewhere about Stanstead he put an 
unfortunate question to me as to the probability of its 
turning out a good turnip season, and when I, who am 
still less of an .agriculturist than a steam philosopher, 
not knowing a turnip from a potato ground, innocently 
made answer that I believed it depended very much 
upon boiled legs of mutton, my unlucky reply set Miss 
Isola a-laughing to a degree that disturbed her 
tranquillity for the only moment of our journey. I am 
afraid my credit sank very low with my other fellow- 
traveller, who had thought he had met with a well- 
informed passenger, which is an accident so desirable 
in a stage-coach. We were rather less communicative, 
but still friendly, the rest of the way." 

A long coaching journey was so unusual an event 
in the life of Lamb, that it is not surprising to find more 
than one reference in his letters to that visit to Fornham, 
And it was characteristic of him to mention, when 
writing to Mrs. Hazlitt, an incident in connection with 
his arrival at the rectory which reminded him of his 
chief weakness. On entering the house he was met by 
Miss Isola. 

" Poor Emma, the first moment we were alone, took 
me into a corner, and said, ' Now, pray don't drink ; do 



278 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

check yourself after dinner, for my sake, and when we 
get to Enfield, you shall drink as much as ever you 
please, and I won't say a word about it' How I 
behaved, you may guess, when I tell you that Mrs. 
Williams and I have written acrostics on each other, 
and she hoped that she should have ' no reason to 
regret Miss Isola's recovery by its depriving her of our 
begun correspondence.' " 

One of his acrostics on her name runs — 

" Go, little poem, and present 
Respectful terms of compliment ; 
A gentle lady bids thee speak ! 
Courteous is she, though thou be weak — 
Evoke from Heaven as thick as manna. 

" Joy after joy on Grace Joanna ; 
On Fornham's Glebe and Pasture land 
A blessing pray. Long, long may stand, 
Not touched by Time, the Rectory blithe ; 
No grudging churl dispute his Tithe ; 
At Easter be the offerings due 

" With cheerful spirit paid ; each pew 
In decent order filled ; no noise 
Loud intervene to drown the voice, 
Learning, or wisdom of the Teacher ; 
Impressive be the Sacred Preacher, 
And strict his notes on holy page ; 
May young and old from age to age 
Salute, and still point out, ' The good man's Parsonage.' " 

Two other acrostics written by Lamb for Mrs. 
Williams and her family are included in his "Album 
Verses." 

" I am afraid I shall sicken you of acrostics," he 



BARTON AND HAWSTEAD 279 

wrote to her, " but this last was written to order. I beg 
you to have inserted in your country paper something 
Hke this advertisement : ' To the nobility, gentry, and 
others, about Bury. . . . C. Lamb respectfully informs 
his friends and the public in general, that he is leaving 
off business in the acrostic line, as he is going into an 
entirely new line. Rebuses and Charades done as usual, 
and upon the old terms. Also, Epitaphs to suit the 
memory of any person deceased.' " 

The temptation to continue in Lamb's company is 
so great that, with the least excuse, I would go on 
quoting him, even to the extent of reprinting that 
delightful letter written to Crabb Robinson on hearing 
a report, "blown circuitously here from Bury," that 
Robinson was suffering from rheumatism — that letter 
in which he so playfully pretends that he himself is the 
sufferer, and not Robinson; but in wandering out of 
Bury to Fornham I am reminded that about two miles 
from the town in another direction — along the Ixworth 
Road — there is another house with which is associated 
the name of a poet who was not unlike Lamb in some 
respects, though he had not the gift of making himself 
so universally loved. This is Barton Hall, a fine old 
house originally built by Robert Audley, early in the 
seventeenth century, but much enlarged by the Bunburys, 
whose home it has been for several generations. Pro- 
bably no house in the county has a finer collection of 
pictures than Barton, including, as it does, works by 
Rubens, Vandyck, Paul Veronese, Lely, Reynolds, and 
several other masters ; and there is also a large collection 
of books, many of which were collected by Sir Thomas 
Hanmer, who spent his declining years at Mildenhall, 



280 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

a few miles from Barton, living there, it is said, a life 
not unlike the home life of Sir Roger de Coverley. 
Not the least interesting of the treasures Barton can 
boast is an unequalled series of the works of Henry W. 
Bunbury, the famous caricaturist. He was a friend of 
Sir Joshua Reynolds, a fact accounting for there being 
so many fine pictures by that artist at Barton, including 
a full-length portraiture of Lady Sarah Lennox as 
Venus sacrificing to the Graces. 

Barton is a house with an almost inexhaustible 
supply of interesting associations ; but those with which 
we are immediately concerned attach to the lovable 
but erratic personality of Oliver Goldsmith, whose name 
became connected with Barton in this way. About the 
year 1769, Goldsmith became an intimate friend of the 
family of Captain Horneck, whom he first met at 
the house of Sir Joshua Reynolds, who had known 
Mrs. Horneck in her native county of Devonshire. 
Subsequently, when a daughter of Captain Horneck 
became the wife of Henry Bunbury, the caricaturist, 
Goldsmith was frequently invited to Barton, where, as 
Prior says, "in agreeable society he found relief from 
the toils of study, and the occasional dissipations of a 
town life." To these invitations he often sent whimsical 
and humorous replies in rhyme, some of which are 
preserved in complete editions of his works. For 
instance, on being asked to spend the Christmas at 
Barton, he replied as follows : — 

" First let me suppose, what may shortly be true, 
The company set, and the word to be — loo ; 
All smirking, and pleasant, and big with adventure, 
And ogling the stake which is fixed in the centre. 



BARTON AND HAWSTEAD 281 

Round and round go the cards, while I inwardly damn 

At never once finding a visit from Pam. 

I lay down my stake, apparently cool. 

While the harpies about me all pocket the pool ; 

I fret in my gizzard— yet cautious and sly, 

I wish all my friends may be bolder than I : 

Yet still they sit snug ; not a creature will aim, 

By losing their money, to venture at fame. 

'Tis in vain that at niggardly caution I scold, 

'Tis in vain that I flatter the brave and the bold ; 

All play their own way, and they think me an ass : 

'What does Mrs. Bunbury ?' ' I, sir ? I pass.' 

' Pray, what does Miss Horneck ? Take courage, come do ! ' 

' Who — I ? Let me see, sir ; why, I must pass, too.' 

Ml-. Bunbury frets, and I fret like the Devil, 

To see them so cowardly, lucky, and civil ; 

Yet still I sit snug, and continue to sigh on, 

Till made by my losses as bold as a lion, 

I venture at all, while my avarice regards 

The whole pool as my own. * Come, give me five cards.' 

' Well done ! ' cry the ladies ; 'Ah ! Doctor, that's good — 

The pool's very rich. Ah ! the Doctor is loo'd.' 

Thus foil'd in my courage, on all sides perplext, 

I ask for advice from the lady that's next. 

' Pray, ma'am, be so good as to give your advice ; 

Don't you think the best way is to venture for't twice ? ' 

' I advise,' cries the lady, ' to try it, I own — 

Ah ! the Doctor is loo'd : come. Doctor, put down.' 

Thus playing and playing, I still grow more eager. 

And so bold, and so bold, I'm at last a bold beggar. 

Now, ladies, I ask — if law matters you're skill'd in. 

Whether crimes such as yours should not come before Fielding ? 

For, giving advice that is not worth a straw. 

May well be called picking of pockets in law ; 

And picking of pockets, with which I now charge ye. 

Is, by Quinto Elizabeth — death without clergy. 

What justice ! when both to the Old Bailey brought ; 

By the gods ! I'll enjoy it, though 'tis but in thought. 

Both are placed at the bar with all proper decorum. 

With bunches of fennel and nosegays before 'em ; 



282 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

Both cover their faces with mobs and all that, 

But the Judge bids them, angrily, take off their hat. 

When uncovered, a buzz of inquiry runs round : 

* Pray, what are their crimes ? ' ' They've been pilfering found.' 

' But, pray, whom have they pilfered?' ' A Doctor, I hear.' 

' What, that solemn-faced, odd-looking man that stands near ? ' 

' The same.' ' What a pity ! How does it surprise one : 

Two handsomer culprits I never set eyes on ! ' 

Then their friends all come round me, with cringing and leering, 

To melt me to pity, and soften my swearing. 

First, Sir Charles advances, with phrases well strung : 

' Consider, dear Doctor, the girls are but young.' 

' The younger the worse, I return him again ; 

' It shows that their habits are all dyed in grain.' 

' But, then, they're so handsome ; one's bosom it grieves.' 

' What signifies handsome when people are thieves.' 

' But where is your justice .'' their cases are hard.' 

' What signifies justice ? I want the reward. 

' There's the parish of Edmonton offers forty pounds ; 

There's the parish of St. Leonard, Shoreditch, offers forty pounds ; 

There's the parish of Tyburn offers forty pounds : 

I shall have all that, if I convict them ! ' 

' But consider their case, it may yet be your own. 

And see how they kneel : is your heart made of stone ? ' 

This moves ; so, at last, I agree to relent. 

For ten pounds in hand, and ten pounds to be spent. 

" I challenge you all to answer this. I tell you, you cannot ; it 
cuts deep. But now for the rest of the letter ; and next — but I 
want room — so I believe I shall battle the rest out at Barton some 
day next week. I don't value you all ! 

"O. G." 

At Barton, where he generally enjoyed the company 
of " Little Comedy " (Mrs. Bunbury), and " The Jessamy 
Bride" (Mary Horneck), Goldsmith was a great favourite. 
Whenever life there was a bit dull, he would say, " Come 
now, and let us play the fool a little," and he was ready 
to take the lead in every mirth-provoking amusement. 
Nor did he object at all to being the victim of practical 



BARTON AND HAWSTEAD 283 

jokes, even though they were carried to the extent of 
daubing paint on his best coat or damaging his only 
wig. He composed comic songs and sang them ; 
romped with the children for hours together ; at cards, 
was always an excited and noisy player ; and so long 
as he stayed in the house every claimant for feminine 
favour found in him a roguish rival. On one occasion^ 
a guest who was at Barton with him tells us, he had 
some difference of opinion with Lord Harrington re- 
specting the depth of a pond in the grounds, and 
remarked that it was not so deep that if anything 
valuable was to be found at the bottom he would 
hesitate to pick it up. Upon this Lord Harrington 
threw a guinea into the pond, and the poet, in attempt- 
ing to fulfil his promise without getting wet, fell into 
the water. He succeeded, however, in securing the 
guinea, and kept it, remarking " that he had abundant 
objects on whom to bestow any further proofs of his 
lordship's whim or bounty." 

One of the pleasantest rambles out of Bury is that 
which takes the traveller to Hardwick House and on 
to Hawstead, where, until about sixty years ago, could 
be seen the old rectory-house which, from 1601 till 
1608, was occupied by Dr. Joseph Hall, the satirist, 
who afterwards became Bishop of Exeter and Norwich. 
It was due to Lady Drury that Hall came to live in 
East Anglia ; for just as he was on the point of accept- 
ing the mastership of a school at Tiverton, she offered 
him the Hawstead living. Sir Robert and Lady Drury 
were then living at Hawstead Place, a large quad- 
rangular moated house of brick and timber, which 
stood on the site of the present Place Farm, where the 



284 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

moat can still be seen ; also the piers of a brick gate- 
way erected in 1675 to commemorate the marriage of 
William Hanmer and Mrs. Peregrine North, the parents 
of Sir Thomas Hanmer. Near by are three fine Oriental 
plane trees, said to be the oldest in England, and to 
have been sent to Sir Robert Drury by Lord Bacon, 
who was related to him, but who is incorrectly credited 
with having introduced the tree into England. It is 
from the Drurys of Hawstead, who had a London house 
on the site of the Olympic Theatre, that Drury Lane 
derives its name. 

Although invited to Hawstead by the lady of the 
manor. Hall did not enjoy here so peaceful a time as 
he had probably looked for when he left Cambridge 
to undertake the duties of a country benefice. This 
was chiefly owing to Sir Robert Drury having been 
strongly prepossessed against him by a Mr. Lilly, 
whom Hall calls " a witty and bold atheist," and who 
appears to have had his feeUngs ruffled by something 
Hall had written in his " Satires." He has been identified 
with that Lilly who wrote " Euphues ; or, The Anatomy 
of Wit ; " but however that may be, he was a near and 
uncongenial neighbour of the new rector of Hawstead, 
and caused him a good deal of trouble until, as Hall 
believed. Providence came to his aid. 

"Finding the obduredness and hopeless condition 
of that man," he writes, " I bent my prayers against 
him ; beseeching God daily, that he would be pleased 
to remove, by some means or other, that apparent 
hindrance of my faithful labours : Who gave me an 
answer accordingly ; for this malicious man, going up 
hastily to London to exasperate my patron against 



BARTON AND HAWSTEAD 285 

me, was then and there swept away by the pestilence, 
and never returned to do any further mischief." 

The obnoxious Lilly having been permanently dis- 
posed of, Hall set to work to build a new parsonage 
house, in which he lived a lonely life until, in 1603, 
a brother rector, having compassion on him, took it 
upon himself to find him a wife. How the courtship 
began and ended. Hall tells us — 

" The uncouth solitariness of my life, and the extreme 
incommodity of that single housekeeping, drew my 
thoughts, after two years, to condescend to the necessity 
of a married estate, which God no less strangely pro- 
vided for me. For, walking from the church on Monday 
in the Whitsun week, with a grave and reverend minister, 
Mr. Grandidge, I saw a comely and modest gentle- 
woman standing at the door of that house where we 
were invited to a wedding dinner ; and, inquiring of 
that worthy friend whether he knew her, 'Yes,' quoth 
he ; * I know her well, and have bespoken her for your 
wife.' When I further demanded an account of that 
answer, he told me she was the daughter of a gentle- 
man whom he much respected, Mr. George Whinniff, 
of Bretenham, that, out of an opinion had of the fitness 
of that match for me, he had already treated with her 
father about it, whom he found very apt to entertain 
it ; advising me not to neglect the opportunity, and 
not concealing the just praises of the modesty, piety, 
good disposition, and other virtues that were lodged 
in that seemly presence. I listened to the motion as 
sent from God, and at last, upon due prosecution, 
happily prevailed ; enjoying the comfortable society of 
that meet help for the space of forty-nine years." 

In 1606 Hall paid a visit to the Continent, in the 
company of Sir Edmund Bacon, the brother of Lady 



286 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

Drury ; but this seems to have been his only lengthy 
absence from Hawstead, his time being largely occupied 
with his literary work and various studies. Among 
other things, he wrote, while here, " The King's Prophecie 
or Weeping Joy," a poem on the death of Queen Eliza- 
beth and the ascension of King James to the throne. 
Only two copies of this poem, one of which is in the 
British Museum, are known to be in existence. Sub- 
sequently he printed his " Centuries of Meditations and 
Vows," dedicated to Sir Robert and Lady Drury ; and, 
as one of his biographers remarks, he went on writing 
book after book in order that he might buy books. 

"A good book," says Hall, "is at once the best 
companion, and guide, and way, and end of our journey. 
Necessity drove our forefathers out of doors, which else, 
in those misty times, had seen no light : we may with 
more ease and no less profit sit still and inherit, and 
enjoy the labours of them and our elder brethren, who 
have purchased our knowledge with much hazard, time, 
toil, and experience, and have been liberal of their 
blood, some of them, to leave us rich." He has left 
us, too, his impressions "Upon the Sight of a Great 
Library : " " What a world of wit is here packed up 
together ! I know not whether this sight doth more 
dismay or comfort me : it dismays me to think that 
here is so much I cannot know ; it comforts me to 
think that this variety yields so good helps to know 
what I should. There is no truer word than that of 
Solomon — there is no end of making many books : 
this sight verifies it — there is no end ; indeed, it were 
pity there should (be) : God hath given to man a busy 
soul, the agitation whereof cannot but through time 
and experience work out many hidden truths ; to sup- 
press these, would be no other than injurious to man- 
kind, whose minds, like unto so many candles, should 



BARTON AND HAWSTEAD 287 

be kindled by each other : the thoughts of our de- 
liberation are most accurate ; these we vent into our 
papers : what a happiness is it that, without all offence 
of necromancy, I may here call up any of the ancient 
worthies of learning, whether human or divine, and 
confer with them of all my doubts ! that I can at 
pleasure summon whole synods of reverend fathers, 
and acute doctors, from all the coasts of the earth, to 
give their well-studied judgments in all points of ques- 
tion which I propose ! neither can I cast my eye casually 
upon any of these silent masters, but I must learn some- 
what : it is a wantonness to complain of choice. No 
law bids us to read all : but the more we can take in 
and digest, the better-liking must the mind needs be." 

Strolling in the dusk along the quiet byways, lanes, 
and field footpaths of Hawstead, Hall had ample oppor- 
tunity for meditation, and he loved to ponder over some 
of the most familiar sights and incidents of a country 
life, and jot down for future use any trend of thought 
they might suggest. Even a glimpse of an owl flitting 
silently out of a wood set him thinking — 

" What a strange melancholy life doth this creature 
lead ; to hide her head all the day long in an ivy bush, 
and at night, when all other birds are at rest, to fly 
abroad, and vent her harsh notes. I know not why 
the ancients made sacred this bird to wisdom, except 
it be for her safe closeness and singular perspicuity ; 
that when other domestical and airy creatures are blind, 
she only had inward light to discern the least objects 
for her own advantage. Surely thus much wit they 
have taught us in her : that he is the wisest man that 
would have least to do with the multitude ; that no 
life is so safe as the obscure ; that retiredness, if it have 
less comfort, yet has less danger and vexation ; lastly, 
that he is truly wise who sees by a light of his own, 



288 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

when the rest of the world sit in ignorant and confused 
darkness, unable to apprehend any truth save by the 
helps of an outward illumination." 

It was the parsimony of Sir Robert Drury which 
drove Hall away from Hawstead, though it is more 
than likely that, even had his patron been generous, 
his growing fame would have created a demand for 
his services in a wider field than the " sweet and civil 
county of Suffolk." 

"My means were but short at Hawstead," he says ; 
" but such as I oft professed, if my then patron would 
have added but one ten pounds by year, which I held 
to be the value of my detained due, I should never have 
removed. One morning, as I lay in my bed, a strong 
motion was suddenly glanced into my thoughts of 
going to London. I arose, and betook me to the way. 
The ground that appeared of that purpose was to speak 
with my patron, Sir Robert Drury ; if by occasion of 
the public preachership of St. Edmunds Bury, then 
offered me upon good conditions, I might draw him 
to a willing yieldance of that parcel of my due main- 
tenance, which was kept back from my not over- 
deserving predecessor." 

On reaching London, Hall was seized with illness 
at his patron's house in Drury Lane ; but notwith- 
standing this he was persuaded by the tutor of the 
Earl of Essex to preach at Richmond before Henry, 
Prince of Wales, who was so pleased with the preacher 
and his discourse that he appointed him his domestic 
chaplain. Almost immediately afterwards Lord Denny 
offered him the benefice of Waltham, which he at once 
accepted. In spite of his patron's meanness to him, 



BARTON AND HAWSTEAD 289 

they parted on good terms, and, in a farewell letter to 
Drury, Hall prays that — 

"The God of the Harvest shall send you a labourer 
more able, as careful. That is my prayer, and hope, 
and shall be my joy, I dare not leave, but in this 
expectation, this assurance. Whatever become of me, 
it shall be my greatest comfort to hear you commend 
your change ; and to see your happy progress in those 
ways I have both showed you and beaten. So shall 
we meet in the end, and never part." 

The church at Hawstead, which has some Norman 
and Early English portions, contains several monuments 
to the Drurys ; also the tomb and ef^gy of Eustace 
FitzEustace, who died in 1271. Much of the furniture, 
including the pulpit, is that with which the church was 
fitted at the time when Hall was rector. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

HONINGTON, EUSTON, AND ICKWORTH 

Robert Bloomfield — Honington — Bloomfield's boyhood — A 
" farmer's boy " — A shoemaker — Capel Lofft — Bloomfield's poems 
— Euston Hall — Evelyn and Horace Walpole at Euston— Ickworth 
House — Frederic Hervey, Bishop of Deny, and the poet Gray — 
Lord John Hervey — Pope and Lord John Hervey — Lady Herve3^ 

DESPITE Charles Lamb's unfavourable opinion of 
Robert Bloomfield and his works, Suffolk folk 
still have a tenderness of heart towards the memory 
of their peasant-poet. They make no pretence of his 
having been a Burns, nor will they do Crabbe the 
injustice of comparing him with a poet who, although 
of little less humble birth, possessed talents of a much 
meaner order ; but it is justly claimed for the Honington 
tailor's son that his homely notes gave true expression 
to the simple pastoral scenes from which he drew his 
inspiration, and pleasure to a wide circle of readers who 
were bewildered or dazzled by the brilliancy of his 
famous poetic contemporaries. Hazlitt, whose criticism 
of him is most friendly, asserts that " as a painter of 
simple natural scenery, and of the still life of the 
country, few writers have more undeniable and un- 
assuming pretensions than " this " ingenious and self- 
taught poet," but he regrets that his muse has something 
"not only rustic, but menial in her aspect." Bloomfield, 

290 



HONINGTON, EUSTON, AND ICKWORTH 291 

however, sang the song of servitude — the labourer's 
servitude to the land which demands so much of him 
and gives him so little in return — and in giving ex- 
pression to the woes, and pains, and humble aspirations 
of the farm-hand he struck only such notes as would 
find a responsive chord in the breasts of his fellow 
servitors. His outlook upon life was limited, and he 
had no imagination to help him to an understanding 
of what lay beyond the restricted bounds of his familiar 
woods and fields and meadows. Even love gave him 
no wider vision, nor set the footsteps of his muse 
a-tripping lightly. As a composer of rustic love-songs 
he is not to be compared with that other peasant-poet, 
John Clare. Bloomfield, even in his happiest moods, 
could never have written — 

" I love thee, sweet Mary, but love thee in fear ; 

Were I but the morning breeze, healthy and airy, 
As thou goest a-walking I'd breathe in thine ear, 
And whisper and sigh how I love thee, my Mary ! 

" I would steal a kiss, but I dare not presume ; 

Were thou but a rose in thy garden, sweet fairy, 
And I a bold bee for to rifle its bloom, 

A whole summer's day would I kiss thee, my Mary ! 

" I long to be with thee, but cannot tell how ; 

Wert thou but the elder that grows on thy dairy, 
And I the blest woodbine to twine on the bough, 
I'd embrace thee and cling to thee ever, my Mary." 

Bloomfield was a poet with no " fine frenzy " in him. 
He gave us no eagle-flights, nor did he look upon life 
from any aerial point of view where its marvels and 
mysteries were revealed to him. His flights were like 
those of the little brown birds which seldom rise far 



292 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

above the field furrows ; he sang at times of the soaring 
lark, but was himself the grey linnet keeping close to 
the earth ; and like the linnet he was the better loved 
by quiet country folk for his humbler strains. 

Bloomfield's native place is a small village about 
nine miles north-east of Bury, and not far from the 
border of that wild open heath country around Thetford 
which is known to-day as Breckland. Immediately 
around Honington, however, the country is fairly well 
wooded, and most of the scenes of which the poet has 
sung may be found within a mile or two of the dilapi- 
dated little clay-walled, thatch-roofed cottage behind 
the post-office, which is pointed out as the house in 
which Bloomfield was born. The cottage is one of 
a kind still common in some parts of the Eastern 
counties — a "wattle-and-daub" structure, such as were 
the homes of nearly all the country labouring folk a 
hundred years ago ; but its occupant in 1766 was 
George Bloomfield, the village tailor, who died, how- 
ever, before his youngest child Robert was a year old. 
He left a family of six young children, to maintain 
whom his widow kept a dame's school. Her own 
children were among her pupils, and we are told that 
she taught Robert to read as soon as he had learnt 
to speak ; but she married again before he was more 
than seven years old, and, apart from two or three 
months' instruction in writing from a schoolmaster in 
the neighbouring parish of Ixworth, all the knowledge 
he ever became possessed of was entirely self-acquired. 
At the age of eleven he became a farmer's boy, his 
employer being his uncle, William Austin, of Sapiston, 
a village adjoining Honington. There he received no 




O o 



HONINGTON, EUSTON, AND ICKWORTH 293 

different treatment than the other boys who worked 
on the farm ; but as his uncle treated his farm boys 
just as he did his sons Robert probably had little to 
complain of. They all worked hard and all lived well. 
The land farmed by William Austin belonged to Robert's 
future patron, the Duke of Grafton, whose seat was 
Euston Hall, a magnificent house built by Lord Arling- 
ton in the reign of Charles II., and which was almost 
totally destroyed by fire about five years ago. Euston 
Park and woods provided the peasant-poet with many 
themes for his muse, and in his "Farmer's Boy" he 
describes the charms of the ducal domain and how 
his own days were spent on that part of it cultivated 
by his uncle. 

*' Where noble Grafton spreads his rich domains, 
Round Euston's water'd vale, and sloping plains. 
Where woods and groves in solemn grandeur rise, 
Where the kite brooding unmolested flies ; 
The woodcock and the painted pheasant race, 
And skulking foxes, destin'd for the chace ; 
There Giles, untaught and unrepining, stray'd 
Through every copse, and grove, and winding glade ; 
There his first thoughts to Nature's charms inclin'd, 
That stamps devotion on th' inquiring mind. 
A little farm his generous Master till'd, 
Who with peculiar grace his station fill'd ; 
By deeds of hospitality endear' d, 
Serv'd from affection, for his worth rever'd ; 
A happy Offspring blest his plenteous board, 
His fields were fruitful, and his barns well stor'd. 
And fourscore Ewes he fed, a sturdy team. 
And lowing Kine that grazed beside the stream ; 
Unceasing industry he kept in view ; 
And never lack'd a job for Giles to do." 

But these lines were not written until some years 
after he had left the Sapiston farm. He was a small 



294 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

and weakly boy, and it was soon evident to his master 
that he was not likely to be able to earn a living 
on the land ; consequently his brother George, who 
was a shoemaker in London, offered to find employ- 
ment for him in the same trade, and at the age of 
fifteen he was taken by his mother up to London. 
There he appears to have made his first essays in 
verse, some of which succeeded in winning a place 
in the " poet's corner " of the " London Magazine " ; 
but it was not until he had married, at the age of 
four-and-twenty, the comely daughter of a Woolwich 
boat-builder, and had commenced house-keeping in a 
single room of a house in Bell Alley, Coleman Street, 
that he employed his mind, whilst working at his last, 
in composing "The Farmer's Boy." Like Thomson's 
" Seasons," this poem is divided into four parts, and it 
is said that he composed and committed to memory 
the latter part of its " Autumn " and the whole of its 
" Winter " without writing down a single line. It was 
offered to several publishers who declined to produce 
it, and finally was submitted to Capel Lofft, who was 
undoubtedly known to the poet as a man of literary 
tastes, residing at Troston near Bury. Under Lofft's 
patronage it was printed, and so favourable was its 
reception that within three years of its publication 
over twenty-six thousand copies were sold. An enthu- 
siastic clergyman translated parts of it into Latin, and 
on hearing of this Bloomfield wrote — 

" Hey, Giles ! in what new garb art dressed ? 
For Lads like you methinks a bold one ; 
I'm glad to see thee so caress'd ; 
But, hark ye ! — don't despise your old one. 



HONINGTON, EUSTON, AND ICKWORTH 295 

Thou'rt not the first by many a Boy 

Who've found abroad good friends to own 'em ; 

Then, in such Coats have shown their joy, 
E'en their own Fathers have not known 'em." 

Not long after the appearance of " The Farmer's 
Boy " Bloomfield revisited Suffolk, and renewed his 
acquaintance with the scenes he had described. He was 
cordially welcomed by the many admirers his poem 
had gained him ; and although admitted into such 
society as the farmer's boy at Sapiston can never have 
expected to enter, he had the good sense not to let 
himself be spoiled by flattery. He met for the first 
time his good friend Capel Lofft, who wrote : — 

" I rejoice that I at length have been made personally 
acquainted with him : that I have seen him here (at 
Troston), and at his mother's, and at Bury : that I 
have discours'd with him : that we have made our rural 
walks together; that I have heard him read some of those 
poems which are not yet printed ; but which when they 
shall be so, will support fully and extend the Fame he 
has acquir'd. Though I have spent, occasionally, much 
of my life among persons worthy of Admiration and of 
Esteem, I can recollect few days so interesting and so 
valuable to me as these." 

Among the poems soon to be presented to the 
public were some which had a direct appeal to the 
country folk of his native county, and which even now 
may sometimes be heard quoted in Suffolk farmhouses 
by old people who can remember the days when they 
were included among the most popular of country 
ballads. The best of them all, perhaps, is " Richard 
and Kate," which was so often recited during winter 



296 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

evenings, when the farm-folk were gathered around the 
ancient open hearth ; but in popularity it was run very 
close by " The Miller's Maid " and " The Horkey " the 
last-named being an entertaining account of the hearty 
feasting and rough and boisterous merriment with 
which the end of harvest was celebrated when farming 
was a more flourishing industry than it is to-day. In 
these simple ballads we have the peasant-poet at his 
best ; but they were scarcely so well appreciated outside 
Suffolk as they were within it, because of the poet's free 
indulgence in vernacularism. The men and women for 
whom they were written knew every step of the farm- 
hand's via dolorosa ; they met Richard and Giles every 
day ; worked beside them in the field, the stackyard, 
the byre ; shared their troubles, their hardships, their 
simple pleasures. The poet who sang to them of 
familiar things — of the home-life of the cottage, the 
cakes and ale of the farmer's kitchen, the fun of the 
country fair, the swinging of the flail, and the rolling 
of the churn — was one of themselves, and he was not 
without honour in his own country. He told them in 
rhyme the tales they had often heard by their own 
firesides, and his — 

" song, well meet for peasant lore, 
Was lowly, simple, undefil'd." 

Euston Hall, the seat of that Duke of Grafton who 
did his best to help Bloomfield pecuniarily by securing 
for him a post in the Stamp Office, has been rebuilt 
since the disastrous fire in 1902, but enough of the 
original building remains to convey some idea of its 
character. It was visited in 1671 by Evelyn, who was 



PIONINGTON, EUSTON, AND ICKWORTH 297 

the guest there of Lord Arlington, and who describes 
it as "a very noble pile consisting of four pavilions 
after the French, beside a body of a large house." 
Its chief drawback was its situation, on "soil dry, 
barren, and miserably sandy, which flies in drifts as 
the wind sets ; " but the planting of woods and fir belts — 
in the planning of which Evelyn's advice was sought 
by the Earl — tended to decrease the volume of these 
sand storms. A later visitor to Euston, Horace Walpole, 
was not so favourably impressed by it. Euston, he 
writes : — 

" is one of the most admired seats in England, in my 
opinion, because Kent has made a most absolute dis- 
position of it. Kent is now so fashionable that, like 
Addison's ' Liberty,' he — 

* Can make bleak rocks and barren mountains smile.' 

I believe the duke wishes he could make them green 
too. The house is large and bad : it was built by Lord 
Arlington, and stands, as all old houses do, for con- 
venience of water and shelter, in a hole ; so it neither 
sees nor is seen ; he has no money to build another." 

The park pleased Walpole more than did the house. 
He thought it "fine, the old woods excessively so : they 
are much grander than Mr. Kent's passion — clumps ; 
that is, sticking a dozen trees here and there till a lawn 
looks like the ten of spades." 

Evelyn was at Euston again in 1677, filled with 
admiration of the many wonderful improvements made 
by the Earl of Arlington since his previous visit. 
Especially was he impressed by a remarkable screw- 
bridge devised by Sir Samuel Morland, "which, being 
turned with a key, lands you thirty feet distant." He 



298 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

makes a note of the fact that the earl had built a new 
church. This was " most laudable, most of the Houses 
of God in this country resembling rather stables and 
thatched cottages than temples in which to serve the 
Most High." While having his headquarters at Euston, 
he made excursions to Ipswich and Thetford, also to 
Bury, where he attended the death-bed of Lord Crofts 
— the *' mad-cap Croftes " of Grammont's " Memoirs " — 
whose home was at Little Saxham. Of the Hall, where 
Lord Crofts was visited at least four times by Charles II., 
Pepys the diarist being also a guest there on one of 
those occasions, nothing now remains save the founda- 
tions and moat in the middle of a field. 

Notwithstanding that neglect, together with the 
impoverishment of some once-notable families, has re- 
sulted in the decay of several fine old houses, the 
neighbourhood of Bury is still somewhat remarkable 
for its old halls and historic seats, and the interesting 
associations of these are so numerous and varied that 
the reference which has been made to some of them 
necessitates the neglect of others with equal claims to 
recognition. In closing this chapter, however, brief 
mention must be made of Ickworth House, built by 
that Frederic Hervey, Earl of Bristol and Bishop of 
Derry, who was a college friend of the poet Gray, with 
whom, as the latter records, he ate "four raspberry 
puffs " one day in the pastry-cook's shop at the corner 
of Cranbourne Street. Ickworth Building, as it is 
locally called, is a comparatively modern house, dating 
only from the latter part of the eighteenth century. 
Before it was built there were Herveys at Ickworth, 
and among them was that John, Lord Hervey, whose 



HONINGTON, EUSTON, AND ICKWORTH 299 

" Memoirs " give us interesting and valuable glimpses 
into court life during the first ten years of the reign 
of George II., but whose name is most frequently 
mentioned nowadays in connection with that of Pope, 
with whom he had a long and bitter quarrel. Exactly 
" what 'twas all about " it is difficult now to decide ; 
but in their exchange of literary discourtesies Lord 
Hervey undoubtedly came off second best. Pope 
attacked him severely in several of his writings, calling 
him " Lord Fanny " on account of his peculiar manners, 
and elsewhere " Narcissus " who — 

" praised with all a parson's power, 
Looked a white hly sunk beneath a shower." 

The poet is also credited with being the originator of 
the saying, "that this world consists of men, women, 
and Herveys ; " but it is quite as likely that this saying 
has been correctly attributed to Lady Mary Wortley 
Montagu. John, Lord Hervey was the husband of that 
Lady Mary (Lepell) Hervey who was a famous court 
beauty of her day, and whose praises were sung by 
Pope and Gay, Pulteney and Chesterfield, while Vol- 
taire, another of her admirers, addressed to her some 
verses in English commencing — 

" Hervey, would you know the passion 
You have kindled in my breast." 

Some of her brightly written letters are to be found 
in the published correspondence of Henrietta, Countess 
of Suffolk, while others, sent to the Rev. Edmund 
Morris, her sons' tutor, were issued in 1821. Most 
of them were written from Ickworth, and they prove 
Lady Mary to have become something more than " the 



300 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

beautiful Molly Lepell " whose life at Court, while she 
attended Caroline of Anspach, must perforce have been 
one of extravagant gaiety. She took a keen interest 
in home and foreign politics, had a good taste in, and 
was a shrewd critic of, literature, and could never read 
a good book without being anxious that her friends 
should share her enjoyment of it. Birds and flowers 
were also a constant delight to her. 

" For the last three weeks," she writes, " I have 
been stuck as deeply in my garden as any of the 
plants I have set there, and I wish they may flourish 
half as well ; for though I can't say I have run up in 
height, yet I have spread most luxuriantly." As for 
the birds, " I have drawn a prodigious concourse of all 
kinds to the garden, and to my window in particular, 
by plenty of seeds, crumbs of bread, oatmeal, and all 
that can please their taste and solicit their abode. I 
have planted them a retreat in bad weather. They 
repay me by the most delightful music. ... I 
will enjoy this sweet place, and quiet way of living 
as long as Lord Bristol lives, and am preparing a 
dwelling that will suit better with my purse, though 
not so well with my inclination. I have paid dear to 
make that dwelling look as like the country as I can ; 
but I have been too much used to grass and trees to 
bear changing them for bricks and dust." 

Lady Hervey died in September, 1768. Horace 
Walpole, who had addressed to her some of the best 
of his letters, wrote to Sir Horace Mann soon after 
her death : — 

" Lady Hervey, one of my great friends, died in 
my absence. She is a great loss to several persons ; 
her house was one of the most agreeable in London ; 



HONINGTON, EUSTON, AND ICKWORTH 301 

and her own friendliness, good breeding, and amiable 
temper, had attached all that knew her. Her suffer- 
ings . . . were terrible, and yet never could affect her 
patience, or divert her attention to her friends." 

She is buried in Ickworth Church, where her grave 
bears some memorial lines written by Walpole. 



CHAPTER XIX 
KING'S LYNN AND NORTH NORFOLK 

A Dutch-like town — Its old merchants — Monastic times — 
Notable monks of Lynn — ^John Capgrave — Was Chaucer a native of 
Lynn? — Roger L'Strange — Horace Walpole — Houghton Hall — 
Dr. Burney — Fanny Barney — Eugene Aram — The story of his life. 

THAT part of Norfolk of which the ancient port of 
King's Lynn is the chief town, is more attractive 
by reason of its variety of scenery than any other part 
of East Anglia ; for it includes, not only a considerable 
portion of the wide-spreading Fenland, but also the 
delightful hilly and heathy country amid which the 
King has his Norfolk home, the northern part of 
the great chalk ridge which crosses West Norfolk, that 
picturesque valley of the Nar which Canon Jessopp has 
called the Norfolk Holy Land, the salt marsh levels 
and wild-fowl haunted border-lands of the Wash, and 
some of the prettiest seashore and inland villages on 
and near the East Coast. The history of the district, 
too, is full of interest and romance, attaching chiefly to 
Lynn when it was besieged by the Parliament troops 
and was one of the most flourishing ports in the kingdom ; 
Castle Rising, when it was the home of that tragic 
queen, Isabella, wife of the murdered King Edward II. ; 
Houghton Hall, when it was the scene of the almost 

302 



KING'S LYNN AND NORTH NORFOLK 303 

regal hospitality of its builder, Sir Robert Walpole ; 
Anmer, at the time when it was the hiding-place of 
Henry Walpole the Jesuit ; and the old Fen villages in 
the days of the great Fen floods. The stories of these 
times and places are oft-told tales, and the main facts 
of them — or something like them — are set down in 
nearly every local guide-book ; while the scenery of 
North Norfolk, of its primitive heathland, sluggish 
streams, varied coast-line, and somnolent fens, has been 
described time after time, and especially since the King 
(then Prince of Wales), by purchasing Sandringham, 
became a Norfolk squire. So to find a fresh interest 
in a district so well known is no easy matter ; and in 
gathering together some of its literary associations one 
must of necessity travel several country highways and 
byways, and not expect to find all one seeks in and around 
its only important town. For Lynn, since monastic 
times, has never been famous as a seat of learning, nor, 
in spite of its somewhat adventurous associations, has 
it ever received the attention it deserves at the hands of 
writers of stirring romance. Some day the old town, 
which has numbered among its burgesses so many 
merchant-adventurers, and which gave to the world so 
famous a navigator as Vancouver, may excite the 
interest of a writer capable of telling its stirring story 
as it should be told. 

In many respects King's Lynn reminds one of an 
old Dutch town ; for to a large extent it has been won 
from the sea, and almost everywhere about it there are 
traces of that adventurous enterprise which had its 
origin in the buccaneering exploits of the daring seamen 
of Elizabeth's reien. Some of the houses of the old 



304 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

merchants of Lynn are still standing in the streets near 
the river, and their fine doorways and the oak panelling 
of the rooms are significant of successful ventures into 
foreign lands ; labyrinths of crypt-like vaults beneath 
them, and tunnelling nearly the whole of King's Staithe 
Square, remind one that for many years Lynn was the 
principal wine-importing port of the kingdom ; while 
the sight of an ancient inn with such a name as the 
Greenland Fishery suggests a time when the Lynn 
whale-fishery was flourishing, and the streets were at 
times boisterous with the merry-making of sturdy 
mariners, home from the northern seas. The old Halls 
of the merchants' guilds, the paintings of old ships over 
the fireplaces of the old houses down by the river, 
together with some of the ancient records so ably edited 
for the Historical Manuscripts Commission by the late 
Mr, Cordy JeafFreson, and the statements of old writers 
and diarists who knew Lynn in its palmiest days, one 
and all tend to prove that for centuries the old town 
had little concern save for matters connected with its 
shipping trade, that its heroes were its successful mer- 
chants, its measure of a man's worth the fulness of his 
cellars and the length of his purse. In a community 
with interests so centred, with such standards, and with 
ambitions so practical, there could hardly be much room 
for the development of native literary talent ; con- 
sequently, its men of letters, with very few exceptions, 
have been strangers whom force of circumstance brought 
for a time into the midst of its mercantile trafficking. 
Among its merchant princes there was probably none who 
could have appreciated the feelings of that worthy Lynn 
doctor, Sir William Browne, whom Foote caricatured 




^:i^ 




^'*'i^ 








JSrw 



KING'S LYNN AND NORTH NORFOLK 305 

in his farce " The Devil on Two Sticks," and who, before 
he died and was buried at HilHngton, near Lynn, 
directed that his Elzevir " Horace " should be buried 
with him. 

In monastic times, however, the conditions of life in 
the town were different, and in the cloistral calm of its 
several monasteries men thought of other things than 
money-making and cultivated learning for its own sake. 
There Alan of Lynn laboriously compiled his numerous 
indices and Galfridus " Grammaticus," his English and 
Latin dictionary ; William Gale distinguished himself 
by his learning and piety, and, most notable of all, John 
Capgrave, Provincial of the English Austin Friars, wrote 
his " Lives of the Saints " and several other works which 
made him deservedly famous. Capgrave was evidently 
a Lynn man by birth ; for in the Prologue of his " Life 
of St. Katharine of Alexandria," he says — 

" If you will know what that I am : 
My country is Norfolk, of the town of Lynn ; 
Out of the world to my profit I came 
Into the brotherhood which I am in — 
God give me grace never for to blynne (cease) 
To follow the steps of my fathers before 
Which to the rule of Austin were swore." 

Like John Lydgate of Bury, he was a contemporary of 
Chaucer, though he was but a child when the great poet 
died ; and this reminds one that it has been claimed for 
Lynn that it was the birthplace of Chaucer. Mr. Walter 
Rye has pointed out that in a manuscript history of 
Lynn, called " Lennae Rediviva," said to have been 
written by Ben Adam for Edward IV., it is positively 

X 



306 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

stated that the poet was born in Lynn ; for under the 
heading of " Friars " the author writes — 

" Lynn had the honour to present the world 
With Geoffrey Chaucer, Capgrave, and the curled 
Pate Albanus de Lenna, &c." 

In the opinion of Mr. Rye there are several things 
suggestive of Chaucer being a Norfolk man, such as his 
reference to the obscure Norfolk village " clepen Baldes- 
welle," to Friar Nicholas of Lynn, and to the Holy 
Cross of Bromholme, to say nothing of possible family 
connections ; but the generally accepted belief is that 
Chaucer was born in London. 

In 1644, the year after the siege and capitulation of 
Lynn to the Parliament troops, there was a small con- 
spiracy among the local Royalists to regain possession 
of the town for the king. The leading conspirator was 
Roger L'Estrange of Hunstanton, who, while plotting 
and planning, had his headquarters at Appleton Hall, a 
house which stood on the site now occupied by the 
Norfolk home of the King of Norway. L'Estrange was 
betrayed by one of his confederates, and, after a trial by 
martial law, was condemned to death ; but after lying 
three years in prison he escaped to the Continent, where 
he stayed until the Restoration. While in prison he is 
said to have written some verses entitled ** The Liberty 
of Imprisoned Royalists," two of which are as follows — 

" That which the world miscalls a gaol, 

A private closet is to me, 
Whilst a good conscience is my bail, 

And innocence my liberty. 
Locks, bars, walls, leanness, though together met, 
Make me no prisoner, but an anchoret. 



KING'S LYNN AND NORTH NORFOLK 307 

" I am the bird whom they combine 

Thus to deprive of liberty ; 
But though they do my corps confine, 

Yet, maugre hate, my soul is free ; 
And though I'm mewed, yet I can chirp and sing, 
Disgrace to rebels, glory to my king ! " 

But it was neither his plotting nor his verse-writing 
won for Roger L'Estrange the honour of being accorded 
something like ten pages in the " Dictionary of National 
Biography." He was an industrious pamphleteer and 
political controversialist of the most outspoken order, 
though withal a somewhat scurrilous writer, who rarely 
knew when he had passed the bounds of good taste ; 
and by starting in 1663 a weekly sheet called "The 
Intelligencer," " published for the satisfaction and infor- 
mation of the people," he has caused himself to be 
remembered as the founder of the first newspaper, and 
that a half-penny one ! A copy of the first issue, which 
was published on a Monday, is preserved in the Public 
Record Office. Pepys, who speaks of L'Estrange as 
"a man of fine conversation, I think, but I am sure 
most courtly and full of compliments," bought " The 
Intelligencer " on the day of its first issue, and thought 
its editor had made " but a simple beginning." On the 
following Thursday, L'Estrange published another single 
sheet called "The News," and he continued to issue the 
one on Mondays and the other on Thursdays until the 
early part of 1666, trying, Pepys tells us, "to get now 
and then some news of me." Later on, from one cause 
and another, he became unpopular with the public, and 
in November, 1680, was burnt in effigy by a London 
mob. In a tract issued in October of that year he is 



308 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

depicted as a dog holding a violin and bow (a hit at his 
talent for music), and in an appended note, written in 
imitation of a '* Hue and Cry," it is said of him : " He 
has a thousand tricks, viz., to fetch for the Papists, 
carry for the Protestants, whine to the King, dance to 
Noll's fiddle, fawn on the courtier, wag his tail at all 
bitches, hunt counter to the plot, tonguepad the evidence, 
and cring to the crucifix, but, above all, he has a damn'd 
old trick of slipping the halter." He was popularly 
known as " the Dog Towzer," and among other lampoons 
directed against him was what purported to be the first 
number of a periodical called " News from the Land of 
Chivahy, containing a pleasant and delectable history, 
and the wonderful and strange adventures of Don 
Rogero de Strangemento, Kt. of the Squeaking Fiddle- 
stick." He won, however, the favour of King James H., 
by whom, in April, 1685, he was knighted. In addition 
to his political pamphlets, he was the compiler of " The 
Fables of ^Esop and other Eminent Mythologists," 
which has since been described as the most extensive 
collection of fables in existence ; he was also the author 
of some amusing satires. Macaulay describes his style 
as being " a mean and flippant jargon," while Hallam 
regarded him as " the pattern of bad writing ; " but he 
was undoubtedly one of the most popular writers of his 
day, and not without claims to be considered a scholar. 
He lived to a good old age, being born at Hunstanton 
Hall in 1616 and dying in 1704. He was buried in 
London, in the church of St. Giles-in-the-Fields. 

Horace Walpole's connection with Lynn was that of 
its representative in Parliament, to which he was elected, 
as member for the town, in 1761. The festivities by 



KING^S LYNN AND NORTH NORFOLK 309 

which his return was celebrated were not at all to his 
taste ; and a few days after the election he wrote to his 
friend George Montagu — 

" Think of me, the subject of a mob, who was scarce 
ever before in a mob, addressing them in the town hall, 
riding at the head of two thousand people through such 
a town as Lynn, dining with above two hundred of 
them, amid bumpers, huzzas, songs, and tobacco, and 
finishing with country dancing at a ball, and sixpenny 
whist ! I have borne it all cheerfully ; nay, have sat 
hours in conversation, the thing upon earth that I hate ; 
have been to hear misses play on the harpsichord, and 
to see an alderman's copies of Rubens and Carlo Marat. 
Yet to do the folks justice, they are sensible and reason- 
able and civilized ; their language is polished since I 
lived among them. I attribute this to their more fre- 
quent intercourse with the world and the capital, by the 
help of good roads and postchaises, which, if they have 
abridged the King's dominions, have at least tamed his 
subjects." 

But Lynn probably saw very little of Horace Walpole, 
who was far from being attracted by the " wilds of 
Norfolk," as he called them, and who could never even 
feel at home in his father's magnificent house at 
Houghton — a massive and stately house a few miles 
from the town. There, as a young man, he resented 
having to meet the bucolic squires — " mountains of roast 
beef . . . roughly hewn out into the outlines of human 
form " — whom Sir Robert invited to be his guests ; and 
in after years he could never bear to stay in the house 
for more than a day or two at a time, owing to the 
melancholy reflections it suggested to him. These he 
embodied in one of his most frequently quoted letters. 



310 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

" Here I am at Houghton ! and alone ! in this spot 
where (except two hours last month) I have not been 
for sixteen years. Think, what a crowd of reflections ! 
No ; Gray, and forty churchyards, could not furnish so 
many ; nay, I know one must feel them with greater 
indifference than I possess, to have patience to put them 
into verse. Here I am, probably for the last time of 
my life ; every clock that strikes tells me I am an hour 
nearer yonder church — that church, into which I have 
not yet had courage to enter, where lies the mother on 
whom I doated, and who doated on me. There are two 
rival mistresses of Houghton, neither of whom ever 
wished to enjoy it — there too lies he who founded its 
greatness, to contribute to whose fall all Europe was 
embroiled. There he sleeps in quiet dignity, while his 
friend and his foe, rather his false ally and his real 
enemy, are exhausting the dregs of their pitiful lives in 
squabbles and pamphlets. 

" The surprise the pictures gave me is again renewed : 
accustomed for many years to see nothing but wretched 
daubs and varnished copies at auctions, I look at these 
as enchantment. My own description of them seems 
poor ; but shall I tell you truly, the majesty of Italian 
ideas sinks before the warm nature of Flemish colouring. 
Alas ! don't I grow old ? My young imagination was 
fired with Guido's ideas ! Does great youth feel with 
poetic limbs, as well as see with poetic eyes ? In one 
respect I am very young. I cannot satiate myself with 
looking : an incident contributed to make me feel this 
more strongly. A party arrived, just as I did, to see 
the house, a man and three women in riding dresses, 
and they rode post through the apartments. I could 
not hurry before them fast enough ; they were not so 
long in seeing, for the first time, as I could have been 
in one room to examine what I knew by heart. I 
remember formerly being diverted with these see-ers ; 
they come, ask what such a room is called in which Sir 
Robert lay, write it down, admire a lobster or a cabbage 



KING'S LYNN AND NORTH NORFOLK 311 

in a market-piece, dispute whether the last room was 
green or purple, and then hurry to the inn for fear the 
fish should be over-dressed. How different my sensa- 
tions ! Not a picture here but recalls a history ; not 
one but I remember in Downing-street or Chelsea, where 
queens and crowds admired them, though seeing them 
as little as those travellers ! 

" When I had drunk tea, I strolled into the garden : 
they told me it was now called 'the pleasure ground.' 
What a dissonant idea of pleasure ! Those groves, 
those alleys, where I have passed so many charming 
moments, are now stripped up or overgrown : many 
fond paths I could not unravel, though with a very 
exact clue in my memory. I met two gamekeepers and 
a thousand hares ! In the days when all my soul was 
tuned to pleasure and vivacity (and you will think, 
perhaps, it is far from being out of tune yet), I hated 
Houghton and its solitude. Yet I loved this garden — 
as now, with many regrets, I love Houghton — Houghton, 
I know not what to call it, a monument of grandeur or 
ruin. How I wished this evening for Lord Bute : how I 
could preach to him ! For myself, I don't want to be 
preached to. The servants wanted to lay me in the 
great apartment. — What ! to make me pass my night 
as I had done my evening ! It was like proposing to 
Margaret Roper to be a duchess in the court that cut 
off her father's head, and imagining that would please 
her. I have chosen to sit in my father's little dressing- 
room ; and am now by his escritoire, where, in the height 
of his fortune, he used to receive the accounts of his 
farmers, and deceive himself, or us, with the thoughts of 
his economy. How wise a man at once, and how weak ! 
For what has he built Houghton ? For his grandson 
to annihilate, or for his son to mourn over." 

In that quiet country church in Houghton Park — 
that church into which he had not the courage to enter 
— Horace Walpole, the fantastic and fastidious dilettante, 



312 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

the hater of quiet country life, lies buried with his father, 
the great prime minister. To neither the famous letter- 
writer nor the great statesman is there any monument 
raised ; but above the vault in which they lie, with other 
Walpoles, famous and obscure, there is placed a fine 
effigy of a nameless prior, brought from the priory 
church of Cokesford nearly four hundred years ago. 

A few months before Horace Walpole was elected 
to Parliament as member for Lynn, there departed from 
the town Dr. Charles Burney, the author of the " History 
of Music," who had filled the post of organist of St, 
Margaret's Church. With him he took a little daughter 
who had been born during his residence in the town, 
and who, as Fanny Burney, author of " Evelina," was to 
meet with remarkable success as a novelist before she 
attained her twenty-sixth year. She was born in June, 
1752 ; but no record has been preserved which might 
help us to identify the house in which her father was 
living at the time ; afterwards the family appear to 
have lived in a house which faced the west door of St. 
Margaret's Church (where its site is now occupied by 
a modern one) or in a neighbouring house now known as 
Dr. Chadwick's. She is said to have been a remarkably 
shy and backward child ; at eight years old she did not 
know her letters, and her elder brother used to amuse 
himself by pretending to teach her to read from a book 
held upside down — a trick which, he declared, she never 
found out. She was called " the little dunce " save by 
her mother, who was a woman of considerable insight 
and ability and may have perceived that behind the 
child's diffidence and apparent stupidity lay a reflective 
mind and a wisdom beyond her years. Fanny was only 



KING'S LYNN AND NORTH NORFOLK 313 

eight when her father removed to London ; but in 1768 
— a year after Dr. Burney's second marriage, to Mrs. 
Allen, the widow of a Lynn merchant — she returned 
for a while to Lynn and wrote here some of the earliest 
notes of her " Early Diary " in " the pleasantest place " 
belonging to the old house near the churchyard. " It is 
called ' the Look out ' — as ships are observed from 
hence." Adjoining the house was a small but prettily 
laid out garden, where, on mild summer evenings, she 
walked to and fro, meditating on the books she was 
reading, especially those dealing with matters of 
religion. She scarcely ever walked in this garden, she 
says, " without becoming grave, for it has the most 
private, lonely, shady, melancholy look in the world." 
At the age of sixteen she was convinced that a country 
town was " her detestation." In a city or a village one 
could be comfortable ; but a country town had " all the 
bad qualities, without one of the good ones, of both." 
Her visitors did not at all please her. " Such a set of 
tattle tattle, prittle prattle visitants ! Oh dear ! I am so 
sick of the ceremony and fuss of these fall lall people ! " 
In the following year, when she was again in Lynn, she 
makes a similar complaint about " This perpetual round 
of constrained civilities," pronouncing it "a most un- 
worthy way of spending our precious and irrecover- 
able time." 

Fanny Burney at Lynn, however, is little more than 
a shadow, and she comes into these pages only to pass 
out of them again. For the majority of visitors to 
Lynn, as well as for the greater number of the towns- 
folk, the literary associations of the town begin and end 
with Eugene Aram. Although nearly a century and 



314 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

a half have elapsed since Aram was executed at York 
for the murder of Daniel Clark at Knaresborough, a 
somewhat morbid interest, chiefly inspired by Bulwer's 
romance, Thomas Hood's familiar verses, and Sir Henry 
Irving's genius for tragedy, still attaches to the old 
schoolhouse in St, James's Street, where, until a year 
ago, the Grammar School was conducted of which Aram 
was an undermaster at the time of his arrest. That old 
schoolhouse, however, has no actual association with the 
murderer ; for when Aram was connected with the 
school, it was conducted in an old Charnel Chapel, 
which stood on the site now occupied by the shambles 
and reading-rooms. To-day, it is rather hard to under- 
stand why so sordid and commonplace a crime as the 
murder of Clark by a man like Aram should have 
caused so great a sensation all over the country, for 
the crime is almost without a touch of romance ; but 
the fact of the murderer having been able to live among 
his fellows unsuspected for nearly fourteen years after 
it was committed, and display during that time no sign 
of remorse or fear of a just retribution, undeniably made 
a great impression on the public mind, notwithstanding 
that similar cases were already recorded in the annals 
of crime. Since then many a more sensational murder 
has been committed and forgotten ; but the name of 
Aram still suggests to most people a unique and 
mysterious personality, in spite of the brutality of his 
crime and the sordidness of its motive. 

The story of his career can be briefly told. Born at 
Ramsgill in Netherdale in 1704, Aram, whose father 
was a gardener, obtained, after a few years schooling, 
employment as a clerk in London ; but was soon 



KING'S LYNN AND NORTH NORFOLK 315 

obliged to return home on account of ill-health. He 
then opened a small school in his native place and 
afterwards married. In 1734 he removed to Knares- 
borough, where he continued to teach, occupying much 
of his spare time in studying Latin, Greek and Hebrew. 
He remained in Knaresborough about ten years, and 
then left the town suddenly under suspicion of being 
concerned in some fraudulent practices with Daniel 
Clark, who at the same time disappeared. Little 
definite is known of his life during the next twelve or 
thirteen years ; but he seems to have roamed about the 
country, sometimes obtaining engagements at schools, 
but not confining himself to scholastic work, though he 
maintained his interest in the study of languages, and 
became fairly proficient in French, Arabic and Celtic. 
Early in 1758 he appears to have applied for the position 
of undermaster of the Lynn Grammar School ; for in 
the Corporation Hall Books, under date of the 14th 
February of that year, there is the following entry : 

" Mr. Knox having informed this House by letter that 
he had dismissed John Birkes, his late usher, and had 
engaged Eugenius Aram in his stead, subject to their 
approbation, the said Eugenius Aram is approved of by 
this House during the pleasure and under the control 
and power entirely of the said Mr. Knox, and it is 
ordered that the usher's salary be paid to Mr. Knox 
during the pleasure of this House." 

Soon after his arrival at Lynn, Aram made the 
acquaintance of the Rev. Thomas Weatherhead, who 
was vicar of Heacham, a coast parish a few miles from 
the town, and when the school broke up for its summer 
holiday he accepted an invitation to stay for a while at 



316 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OFEASTANGLIA 

Heacham Vicarage. While working in the garden 
there, he was recognised by a Yorkshire horse-dealer, 
who called at the house and told the vicar that he knew 
his friend and that his name was Aram. The horse- 
dealer subsequently went to Knaresborough, where he 
mentioned having seen Aram ; but nothing came of 
this until the following August, when the discovery of 
some human bones in the neighbourhood of Knares- 
borough reminded the townsfolk of Clark's disappear- 
ance, and it was suggested that the bones were his and 
that he had been murdered. An inquest was held, at 
which a man named Houseman, who had been Aram's 
accomplice, stated, on seeing the bones : " These are no 
more Daniel Clark's bones than they are mine ; " an 
expression of opinion which caused him to be arrested 
on suspicion of having been concerned in the murder. 
He was taken to York, and there accused Aram of the 
crime, adding that the body of the murdered man would 
be found buried in St. Robert's Cave, near Knares- 
borough, where, upon search being made, his skeleton 
was discovered. A warrant was then issued for Aram's 
arrest, and about seven months after his arrival in Lynn 
two constables from Knaresborough were despatched 
here to take him into custody. These two men, Barker 
and Moor by name, first interviewed Sir John Turner, 
a local magistrate, who accompanied them to the old 
Grammar School, where the arrest took place. Hood's 
version of what followed, which is that — 

" Two stern-faced men set out from Lynn, 
Through the cold and heavy mist, 
And Eugene Aram walked between, 
With gyves upon his wrist," 



KING'S LYNN AND NORTH NORFOLK 817 

is hardly correct ; for we are told that the constables con- 
veyed their prisoner to Knaresborough in a post-chaise. 
In a preface to the 1840 edition of his novel, Bulwer 
writes ; 

" The strange history of Eugene Aram had excited 
my interest and wonder long before the present work 
was composed or conceived. It so happened, that 
during Aram's residence at Lynn, his reputation for 
learning had attracted the notice of my grandfather 
— a country gentleman living in the same county, and 
of more intelligence and accomplishments than, at that 
day, usually characterised his class. Aram frequently 
visited at Heydon (my grandfather's house), and gave 
lessons, probably in no very elevated branches of erudi- 
tion, to the younger members of the family. This I 
chanced to hear when I was on a visit to Norfolk, some 
two years before this novel was published, and it tended 
to increase the interest with which I had previously 
speculated on the phenomena of a trial which, take it 
altogether, is perhaps the most remarkable in the 
register of English crime. I endeavoured to collect 
such anecdotes of Aram's life and manners as tradition 
and hearsay still kept afloat. These anecdotes were so 
far uniform that they all concurred in representing him 
as a person who, till the detection of the crime for which 
he was sentenced, had appeared of the mildest character 
and the most unexceptionable morals. An invariable 
gentleness and patience in his mode of tuition — qualities 
then very uncommon at schools — had made him so 
beloved by his pupils at Lynn, that, in after life, there 
was scarcely one of them who did not persist in the 
belief in his innocence. His personal and moral 
peculiarities, as described in these pages, are such as 
were related to me by persons who had heard him 
described by his contemporaries : the calm benign 
countenance — the delicate health — the thoughtful stoop 



318 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

— the noiseless step — the custom, not uncommon with 
scholars and absent men, of muttering to himself — 
a singular eloquence in conversation, when once roused 
from silence — an active tenderness and charity to the 
poor, with whom he was always ready to share his own 
scanty means — an apparent disregard of money, except 
when employed in the purchase of books — an utter 
indifference to the ambition usually accompanying 
self-taught talent, whether to better the condition or 
increase the repute ; — these, and other traits of the 
character portrayed in the novel, are, so far as I can 
rely on my information, faithful to the features of the 
original." 

The novelist himself was convinced of Aram's guilt, 
so far as his being an accomplice of Houseman in the 
commission of the crime was concerned ; but he believed 
him to have been "free from the premeditated design 
and the actual deed of murder." To later editions of 
his novel he appended an authentic specimen of Aram's 
literary work, consisting of an essay entitled " The Mel- 
supper and Shouting the Churn," which was an account 
of the origin of certain rural entertainments and customs 
formerly generally associated with the English harvest. 
This and other papers he had written during his leisure 
hours, together with a remarkable " Outline of a New 
Lexicon," which has since earned for him the title of 
the "true father of comparative philology." Had he 
been born to fortune, or even to a comfortable compe- 
tency, he would probably have distinguished himself by 
his learning, and especially by his linguistic knowledge ; 
instead of this, he was often in dire poverty, and it 
was undoubtedly poverty that drove him to crime and 
brought him to the gallows. Perhaps the justest 



KING'S LYNN AND NORTH NORFOLK 319 

estimate of his character and ability is that of Dr. 
Richard Garnett, who says : 

"Aram was undoubtedly convicted on the testimony 
of a greater criminal than himself, and his talents and 
misfortunes excite so much interest that it would be 
satisfactory to be able to concur with Bulwer's view 
that he was merely guilty of robbery. Unhappily all 
external evidence tends to fix upon him the charge of 
participation in deliberate fraud and murder, and there 
is little in his general conduct to rebut it. His indul- 
gence to children and his kindness to animals are 
indeed amiable traits attested on good authority, but 
such as have frequently been found compatible with 
great moral obliquity. As a self-taught scholar he has 
had many equals ; but his peculiar distinction is to 
have lighted upon a truth of the greatest moment, un- 
recognised in his day by any scholar — the affinity of 
the Celtic to the other European languages. He had 
indeed been anticipated by Edward Lhuyd, and to a less 
extent by Davies and Sheringham, but their observa- 
tions had passed unregarded. Aram's fragment on the 
subject, though marred by fanciful analogies between 
Celtic and Hebrew, proves that he had thoroughly 
grasped it. He had a clear perception of the import- 
ance of local names in etymology, and he was perhaps 
the only man in his age who disputed the direct deriva- 
tion of Latin from Greek. It is hardly too much to say 
that had he enjoyed wealth and leisure he might have 
advanced the study of comparative philology by fifty 
years." 



CHAPTER XX 

KING'S LYNN AND NORTH NORFOLK— contzmfed. 

Sir Walter Besant— "The Lady of Lynn "—Lynn's "Red 
Register " — Anthony Woodville, Earl Rivers — Middleton Towers 
— Caxton's epilogue to "The Dictes and Sayings of the Philo- 
sophers" — Langham — Captain Marryat — Norfolk's Elizabethan 
admirals — Langham Manor — Marryat as a farmer — His treatment 
of the coastguard's officer — Death of Marryat — His grave. 

SAVE for a brief mention in the preface, nothing is 
said in Bulwer's novel about Aram's connection 
with Lynn — an omission by which the townsfolk some- 
times feel aggrieved ; but a later novelist, who dealt 
with life in Lynn in its prosperous days, and when it was 
for a brief while a popular spa, made some amends for 
this by making his hero describe the town in flattering 
terms. This was the late Sir Walter Besant, who, in 
his " Lady of Lynn," has a fair Lynn maiden, Molly 
Miller, for his heroine — a fact which may have caused 
Jack Pentecrosse to see the town through rose-tinted 
glasses. 

" I have sailed over many seas," he says ; " I have 
put in at many ports ; I have taken in cargoes of many 
countries — the way of sailors I have found the same 
everywhere. And as for the food and drink, and the 
buildings, I say that Lynn is behind none. Certainly 
the Port of London, whether at Wapping, or Limehouse, 
or Shadwell, cannot show anything so fine as the Market 

320 



KING'S LYNN AND NORTH NORFOLK 321 

Place of Lynn, or St. Margaret's Church, or our Custom 
House. Nor have I found anywhere people more civil 
of speech, and more obliging and well-disposed,-^ than 
in my own town, where, apart from the sailors and their 
quarters, the merchants and shipowners are substantial ; 
trade is always brisk ; sometimes week after week one 
ship arrives and a ship puts out ; the yards are always 
busy ; the hammer and the anvil resound all day long ; 
carpenters, rope-makers, boat-builders, block-makers, 
sail-makers, all the people wanted to fit out a ship . . . 
are at work without intermission all the year round, 
from five in the morning till eight in the evening. They 
stand at good wages ; they live well ; they dress warm ; 
they drink of the best. It is a city of great plenty." 

And Jack goes on to sing the praises of his native 
port, of the Spanish and Portuguese wines, and the 
Bordeaux claret which filled its cellars, its trade with 
Norway and far remoter lands, of the sheep, and hogs, 
and geese, and wild-fowl of the Fens, and the wonderful 
fertility of the reclaimed lands. Nor could he — for his 
father was Master of the Grammar School and an 
antiquary, though he himself was but a simple sailor — 
fail to be impressed by the " ancient buildings, walls, 
towers, arches, churches, gateways," of the town, " frag- 
ments which proclaim its antiquity and speak of its 
former importance." But even the simple sailor could 
not help admitting that Lynn was a place which 

^ It is a pleasure to me to quote Jack Pentecrosse's testimony 
to the civility and good nature of the inhabitants of Lynn, more 
especially as the reputation of the townsfolk, as they were in the 
earlier half of the eighteenth century, may be suffering somewhat 
in consequence of the lately published opinion of Dr. Pyle 
(" Memoirs of a Royal Chaplain ") that " The people of Lynn are 
very fine people— as a man would wish to stick a knife into ! " 
Y 



LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

concerned itself very little about literature, and where 
there was slight encouragement for the development of 
literary taste. When he talked with Molly Miller in the 
summer-house in Captain Crowle's garden, they spoke 
of everything save love and books. 

" There was no talk about books, because there were 
no books. A ready reckoner, a manual of naviga- 
tion, Moll's geography, a wage book, the Bible, and the 
Book of Common Prayer, were the only books belonging 
to the good old Captain. Nor in all Lynn, save for the 
learned shelves of the Vicar and the Curate of St. 
Nicholas, are there any books. It is not a town which 
reads or asks for books. Why, even on market-days 
you will not see any stall for the sale of books, such as 
may be seen every week at Cambridge and at Norwich, 
and even at Bury St. Edmunds. 'Tis, perhaps, a pity 
that so many gentlemen, substantial merchants, and 
sea-captains never read books. For their knowledge of 
the outer world and the nations they trust to the sailors, 
who, to tell the truth, know as much as any books can 
tell them. But sailors are not always truthful." 

Those readers of " The Lady of Lynn " who know 
the old port of Fenland, will easily recognise most of 
the scenes and places described in the novel ; for Sir 
Walter Besant was not content to write without a 
personal acquaintance with the town. It preserves, he 
says through his hero — 

" in spite of neglect and oblivion, more of the appearance 
of age than most towns. The Guildhall, where they 
show the sword and the silver cup of King John, is an 
ancient and noteworthy building ; there are the old 
churches ; there are almshouses and hospitals ; there is 
a Custom House, which the Hollanders enviously declare 



KING'S LYNN AND NORTH NORFOLK 

must have been brought over from their country and set 
up here, so much does it resemble their own buildings. 
Our streets are full of remains. Here a carving in 
marble ; here a window of ancient shape, cut in stone ; 
here a piece of carved work from some ancient chantry 
chapel ; here a deserted and mouldering court ; here a 
house overhanging, gabled, with carved front ; here a 
courtyard, with an ancient house built round it ; and 
with the narrow streets such as one finds only in the 
most ancient parts of our ancient cities. We have still 
our winding lanes, with their irregularities ; houses 
planted sideways as well as fronting the streets ; an 
irregular alignment ; gables instead of a flat coping ; 
casement windows not yet transformed by the modern 
sash ; our old taverns ; our old walls ; our old market- 
places ; and the ancient bridges which span the four 
streams running through the midst of our town." 

In saying that Lynn was without books save those 
found in the libraries of the clergy, Jack Pentecrosse 
did the town some injustice. He should have mentioned 
that the town boasts the possession of a famous " Red 
Register " or " Red Book of Bishop's Lenn," which dates 
from the nineteenth year of Edward III.'s reign, and is 
one of the earliest paper books in existence. This great 
treasure of the municipality, together with the town's 
famous cup, is preserved in a fireproof room at the 
Guildhall ; but although it is of great interest to the 
antiquary and the student of the early forms of town 
government ; and although it has added to our lists of 
curious surnames the remarkable one of William By- 
West-half-the- Water, its contents, considered as a whole, 
are more curious than entertaining. Of greater interest, 
from a literary point of view, is the fact that a nobleman 
who was intimately connected with Lynn, was the writer 



324 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

of the first dated book printed by William Caxton, after 
that famous printer's arrival in England. This was 
Anthony Woodville, Earl Rivers, who lived at Middleton 
Towers, a fine castellated house of which the ancient 
gate-tower is still standing about four miles south-east 
of Lynn, near the main road to Castleacre and Swaffham. 
He has a place in history as the guardian of the young 
King Edward V. and a victim of Richard III. ; and his 
is one of the ghosts called up by Shakespeare to haunt 
Richard on the eve of the battle of Bosworth ; but it 
was some time before he was called upon to undertake 
the guardianship of his royal nephew, that this accom- 
plished nobleman turned his attention to literature. 
His wife, Elizabeth Scales, through whom he inherited 
Middleton, died in 1474, and immediately afterwards he 
started on a pilgrimage to the shrine of St. James at 
Compostella. To beguile his voyage, a friend lent him 
Teonville's French version of " The Dictes and Sayings 
of the Philosophers," a work which so impressed him that 
he determined to render it into English. It was produced 
by Caxton on November i8th, 1477, and in a kind of 
epilogue the printer tells us that, at his patron's request, 
he had read the manuscript in order to correct any 
errors it might contain. 

" I find nothing discordant therein," he writes, " save 
only in the dictes and sayings of Socrates. Wherein 
I find that my said lord hath left out certain and divers 
conclusions touching women. Whereof I marvel that 
my said lord hath not written them, nor what hath 
moved him so to do, nor what cause he had at the time. 
But I suppose that some fair lady hath desired him to 
leave it out of his book, or else he was amorous on 



KING'S LYNN AND NORTH NORFOLK 325 

some noble lady, for whose love he would not set it in 
his book, or else for the very affection, love, and good 
will that he hath unto all ladies and gentlewomen, he 
thought that Socrates spared the sooth and wrote of 
women more than truth, which I cannot think that so 
noble a philosopher as Socrates was should write other- 
wise than truth. But I apperceive that my said lord 
knoweth verily that such defaults be not had nor found 
in the women born and dwelling in these parts nor 
regions of the world. Socrates was a Greek born in a 
far country from hence, which country is all of other 
conditions than this is. And men and women of other 
nature than they be here in this country. For I wot 
well, of whatsomever condition women be in Greece, 
the women of this country be right good, wise, pleasant, 
humble, discreet, sober,chaste,obedient to their husbands, 
true, secret, stedfast, ever busy and never idle, attem- 
perate in speaking, and virtuous in all their works, or 
at least should be so." 

In the February of the following year, Caxton issued 
for Earl Rivers, a translation of the " Proverbs of 
Christine of Pisa," and about twelve months later his 
version of the " Cordyale," in which the printer, after 
recording the Earl's devotion to works of piety, remarks 
of him — 

" It seemeth that he conceiveth well the mutability 
and the unstableness of the present life, and that he 
desireth with a great zeal and spiritual love our ghostly 
help and perpetual salvation, and that we shall abhor 
and utterly forsake the abominable and damnable sins 
which commonly be nowadays." 

It is a rather " far cry " from King's Lynn to 
Langham, a pleasant little village about two miles south 



326 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

of Blakeney and seven from the quaint old coast town 
of Wells ; but there are few readers of sea stories who 
have not, at one time or another, come under the spell of 
the author of "Jacob Faithful " and " Peter Simple," and 
to such this somewhat isolated village — it is five miles 
from the nearest railway station — must have some 
interest as having been for several years the home of 
Captain Marryat. A more fitting place than Langham 
for a sailor to settle down in after an adventurous life 
abroad and afloat could hardly have been chosen ; for 
amid its quiet country scenes he could find complete 
rest and change, yet within a mile or so of the bounds 
of the village are the tidal flats which border the 
North Sea, and on stormy nights, if he lay awake and 
thought of storms and dangers past, he could always 
hear the roaring of the waves as they broke upon the 
shingle ridges beyond the meal marshes at Wells. In- 
deed, in his own immediate neighbourhood he could 
easily have found inspiration for the writing of a stirring 
romance of the- sea ; for in the very next village of 
Cockthorpe those two gallant admirals. Sir Cloudesley 
Shovel and Sir John Narborough were born ; while 
Salthouse, only a few miles away, claims Sir Christopher 
Myngs, another famous seaman, as its own ; and Burnham 
Thorpe, in the same neighbourhood, has world-wide 
renown as the birth-place of Lord Nelson. That Captain 
Marryat was influenced in his choice of a place of 
residence by these associations is unlikely ; but by 
making Langham his country home he linked his name, 
not only with that of our greatest admiral, but with 
those of three old sea heroes England must always 
hold in high esteem, and he added something to that 



KING'S LYNN AND NORTH NORFOLK 327 

atmosphere of briny romance which clings to this out- 
of-the-way corner of the Norfolk coast. 

The estate Captain Marryat purchased consisted of 
about a thousand acres, with two farms, which he at 
first let to tenants, reserving Langham Manor, with its 
gardens and shrubberies, for himself. The house, which 
has now made way for a more imposing one, was a 
thatched cottage in the Elizabethan style, built after 
the model of one at Virginia Water belonging to King 
George IV., and having latticed windows opening on to 
flights of stone steps ornamented with flowers. He first 
occupied it about the year 1830, when, soon after his 
arrival, he invited Washington Irving to be his guest. 
Irving wrote — 

" I shall be delighted to pay you a visit at your new 
place, not only from the description you give me of it, 
which has something wild and engaging, but also from 
the strong inclination I feel to be on sociable terms 
with you ; " 

but the promised visit seems never to have taken place, 
for the dullness of the country, after a lengthy spell of 
town life, proved greater than the gallant captain could 
bear. Before two years had elapsed he was back in 
London ; nor did he settle down at Langham until 
fifteen years later, when he retired here for the rest of 
his life. Writing to his brother-in-law, Bury Palliser, in 
May, 1834, he said: "I have just come back from 
Norfolk, where I had the pleasure of getting no rent, 
because why — the tenant hadn't got none." His tenants 
appear to have given him a great deal of trouble ; for a 
year or two later, writing to his sister, Mrs. Palliser, he 
said — 



328 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

" Land is a plague ; I shall sell mine if I can. My 
tenant, after all I have done for him, has been behaving- 
very ill by all accounts, cutting down my timber and 
allowing people to shoot my game. I shall have him 
out in a very few days, as soon as I can ascertain the 
truth." 

In the course of the next few weeks, however, 
matters much improved. He let the larger part of 
Langham " to a good responsible man for twelve years," 
his new tenant undertaking to bring a decoyman to 
work a small lake on the estate, and to pay, not only a 
high rent for the land, but £go for the right of fishing 
and taking ducks. 

But in the summer of 1843, Marryat himself settled 
down at the Manor Cottage, and, finding that the land 
had again been allowed to get into a bad state — through 
the neglect of a tenant who had also fitted up the 
drawing-room of the Cottage with a row of beds to let 
to tramps at twopence a night ! — he determined to try 
and farm it himself He built model cottages and up- 
to-date pigsties ; talked learnedly of guano, and made 
himself acquainted with the pedigree of his favourite 
bull, Ben Brace; mounted his pony Dumpling, a cream- 
coloured Hanoverian with a black hogged mane and 
long tail, and went out shooting with the neighbouring 
squires ; and, as he was somewhat short-sighted, usually 
wore a curious eyeglass surrounded by a strip of whale- 
bone, the ends of which, bound together, formed a long 
handle, which was stuck through a hole cut in the brim 
of his hat. As a sportsman he was enthusiastic, and as 
an agriculturist he was painstaking : but for all that he 
was, Miss Florence Marryat tells us, " a farmer in theory 




§2 



KING'S LYNN AND NORTH NORFOLK 329 

only, and not in practice." He was very popular with 
his farm-hands, owing to his bluff good-nature ; and for 
poachers he had a strong liking, much to the indignation 
of his brother magistrates. He was wise enough, how- 
ever, to make one of the worst poachers his gamekeeper. 
So long as his health was good, he rose at five every 
morning to inspect his farm ; and his upright, broad- 
shouldered figure, clad in a suit of velveteen, together 
with his massive thoughtful forehead, deep-set grey 
eyes, and grey hair hanging almost down on to his 
shoulders, invariably attracted the attention even of 
those who were unacquainted with him and had no idea 
that he was one of the most popular authors of his day . 
Frequently he was a guest at Holkham, the seat of the 
Earl of Leicester, and Raynham, the old home of the 
Townshends ; but one of his chief cronies was Lieutenant 
Thomas, who was in charge of the coastguards at 
Morston, a neighbouring coast village. Upon this old 
sailor he was fond of playing practical jokes, and it is 
said that on one occasion, when Thomas insisted on 
leaving Langham when Marryat wished him to stay, 
the Captain despatched his bloodhound after him, 
causing him to take to a tree and stay in its branches 
all night. 

The most popular of Marryat's books were written 
before he came to live at Langham ; but during the 
years he spent here he was always an industrious writer. 
He usually wrote in a long narrow dining-room, the 
walls of which were hung with the originals of Clarkson 
Stanfield's illustrations for " Poor Jack " ; at his feet 
crouched his two favourite dogs, Zinny and Juno, while 
from the window he could look out upon the lawn where 



3B0 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF EAST ANGLIA 

Ben Brace was generally allowed to graze. His first 
important work after settling down in his country home 
was the writing of the "Travels of Monsieur Violet," 
formerly credited with being based upon the experiences 
of Chateaubriand, but really on the travels of a young 
Frenchman who visited Langham for the express pur- 
pose of relating his adventures. His name was Lasalle, 
and he astonished the natives of the district by perform- 
ing war-dances and lassoing horses on the Manor Farm. 
Among the romances subsequently produced by Marryat 
at Langham were " Masterman Ready " (in part), " The 
Settlers," "The Privateersman," "Valerie," and "The 
Children of the New Forest." Some of these are still 
favourites with boys, who have always been Marryat's 
greatest admirers ; while others are reprinted nearly 
every year in one or another of the many cheap editions 
of standard works. 

Marryat died at Langham early in the morning of 
August 4th, 1848. During his last lingering illness, 
though sadly weak, he was cheerful and uncomplain- 
ing, and gentle as a little child. Frequent doses of 
morphia were given him to ease his pain, and kept him 
for hours in a dreamy condition, in which he held 
imaginary conversations with his dear friend Charles 
Dickens, Bulwer, or some of his old shipmates. At his 
own request, his funeral was a very simple one, the 
mourners walking to the little Langham Church. The 
men working on the estate carried him to the grave, 
and were followed by a number of bluejackets from the 
neighbouring coastguard station, who had volunteered 
to be the bearers. In the church is a marble tablet in- 
scribed, " Sacred to the Memory of Captain Frederick 



KING'S LYNN AND NORTH NORFOLK 331 

Marryat, R.N., C.B., F.R.S., Member of the Legion 
of Honour, who died at Langham, August 9th, 1848. 
Aged 56 years." The tablet also bears the names of 
two of Marryat's sons, one of whom v/as lost at sea in 
the Avensrey. 



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The Chronicle of Jocelin of Brakelond- Translated by Thomas 
Edlyne Tomlins. 

Past and Present. By Thomas Carlyle. 

Letters of Charles Lamb. Methuen's edition. Edited by E. V. 
Lucas. 

Life and Letters of Captain Marryat. By Florence Marryat. 
1872. 

Harriet Martineau's Autobiography. 1877 Ed. 

Biographical Sketches. By Harriet Martineau. 1869, 

Life of Frederick Denison Maurice. By his son. 1884. 

Memorials of the Life of Amelia Opie. By CeciHa L. Bright- 
well. 1854 Ed. 

Letters of Horace Walpole. 

Letters of Lady Hesketh. Edited by Catharine B. Johnson. 
1901. 

Memoirs of Eighty Years. By Gordon Hake. 1892. 

East Anglia : Personal Recollections and Historical Associa- 
tions. By J. Ewing Ritchie. 1893 Ed. 

A Book of Recollections. By John Cordy Jeaffreson. 1894. 

The Farmer's Boy. By Robert Bloomfield. 1801 Ed. 

Women of Letters. By Mrs. Townshend Mayer. 1894. 

Memoirs of a Royal Chaplain, 1729-1763. Edited by Albert 
Hartshorne. 1905. 

The New Suffolk Garland. By John Clyde, Jan. 1S66. 

The Dictionary of National Biography. 

Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archseolog}'. 



S 



INDEX 



Acle, 111 
Addison, 164 
Ainger, Canon, 77, 79 
Ainsworth, H., 267 
Alan of Lynn, 305 
Aldeburgh, 16, 24, 33-54, 80 
Aldersons, 162 
Allen, John, 6, 236 
Amyot, Thomas, 103 
Angel Inn, Bury, 270, 271 
Anmer, 303 
Appleton Hall, 306 
Aram, Eugene, 313-319 
" Arcady," 96 

Arcedeckne, Andrew, 67, 68 
Arlington, Lord, 293, 297 
Arnold, Dr., 162 

, Matthew, 162 

Aubrey, John, 219 
Austin, Charles, 103 

, John, 103 

, Sarah, 103 

, William, 292, 293 

Avebury, Lord, 146 

Bacon, Sir Edmund, 285 

, Lord, 284 

Baker, Sir Samuel, 232 
Barbauld, Mrs., 102, 242, 243 
Barsham Old Hall, 218-220 

Rectory and Church, 216, 

Barton, Bernard, 5, 9, 20, 26 

34, 57. 204, 265 
Hall, 279-283 



217 
-30, 



Barton, Lucy, 8, 27, 204 

" Bathos," 238 

Beccles, 45, 49, 50, 169, 213-215, 

229 
Bentley, Richard, 131 
Berners, Isopel, 173, 180, 181 
Berry, Sharman, 18-20 
Besant, Sir W., 320-323 
"Bible in Spain," no, 123, 173, 

174, 180, 202 
Birrell, Augustine, no 
Blanchard, Samuel Laman, 201 
Bloomfield, Robert, 14, 276, 290- 

296 
Blundeston, 185-191 
Bonhote, Elizabeth, 224, 225 
" Book about Doctors," 67 
" Book of Recollections," 66 
" Book about the Clergy," 67 
"Borough, The," 50, 77, 79 
Borrow, George, 81-S8, 94, 109- 

123, 124, 157, 159, 171-184, 202- 

206, 227, 265-269 

, John, no 

, Captain Thomas, 84, 86, no, 

120 
Borrow's Court, Norwich, no, in 
Boulge Church, n-14 

Cottage, 6-12 

Hall, 6 

Farm, 14 

Bo wring, Sir John, 205 
Bramford, no, 158 
Brampton, 142 



335 



336 



INDEX 



Bredfield, 2-6, 14, 15 

" Hall," 4, 5 

High House, 14 

White House, 2-6 

Brightwell, Mrs., 105 
Brockett, Laurence, 263 
Broome Rectory, 233-235 

, William, 237, 238 

Browne, Dr. Edward, 134 

, Thomas, 132-134 

, Sir Thomas, 96, 126-146, 257, 

258 

, Sir William, 304 

, Wm. Kenworthy, 156 

Browning, Mrs., 95 
Bull Inn, Woodbridge, 22, 23 
Bulwer, Lytton, 314, 3i7> 3I9j 33° 
Bunbury, H. W., 262, 280 
Bungay, 38, 220-231 

, Friar, 222, 223 

Burke, Edmund, 47 
Burney, Dr. C, 312 

, Fanny, 272, 273, 312-313 

Burnham Thorpe, 326 

Butts, Bishop, 263 

Butley, 60 

Bury St. Edmunds, 6, 26, 96, 245- 

274> 295 
Byron, Lord, 27, 108, 276 

Calamy, Edmund, 256 
Canning, 198, 200 
Capgrave, John, 305, 306 
Carlyle, Thomas, 16, 17, 25, 52, 103, 

167, 200, 246, 247, 248, 249, 250, 

251, 256 
Carrow Nunnery, 240 
"Castaway, The," 92, 93 
Castle Hill, Norwich, 115 

Rising, 302 

Caxton, William, 253, 324, 325 
Charlesworth, Elizabeth, 10 
Chateaubriand, 229-231, 330 



Chaucer, 253, 254, 255, 305, 306 
Chesterfield, Earl of, 299 
" Children of the New Forest," 330 
Childses, The, 227-229 
"Christian Morals," 129 
Churchyard, Thomas, 62 

, Rev. — ., 9 

Clare, John, 291 
Clarke, Sir Ernest, 247 

, Mary, 172 

Cobb, Rev. G., 227 
Cobbe, Frances Power, 113 
Cockthorpe, 326 
Cockton, Henry, 271, 272 
Coleridge, S. T., 138, 140, 201, 

27s, 276 
Constable, John, 124 
Cooper, Sir Astley, 200 

, Rev. S., 200 

Corbet, Miles, 148 

Cotman, J. Sell, 124 

Cowell, Edward Byles, 10, li, 15, 

22, 157, 158, 204, 268 
Cowper, 89-95, 200, 264 
Crabbe, Caroline, 8 
, George (the poet), 33-51, 69- 

80, 169-171, 198, 199, 214, 226 
, Rev. G. (son of the poet), 7, 9, 

14, i5> 34. 35. 70-73. 75> 169, 170 
, Rev. G. (grandson of the 

poet), 24, 26, 270 
Crome, John, no, 116, 124, 125 
Cromer, 203, 204 
Crowfoot, Dr., 214 
Cullum, Sir T. , 268 
Cumberland, 262 
Cunningham, Rev. F., 172 
, A., S3 

Dalrymple, A., 173 
"Darien Song," 53 
"David Copperfield," 185-188, 
193-196 



INDEX 



337 



" Death of Phyllyp Sparowe," 239, 
240 

Deben, River, i, 19, 25 

Defoe, Daniel, 197, 237, 253-260 

Denman, Lord, 243 

D'Eterville, Abbe, 114 

Dickens, Charles, 185-188, 196, 
200, 2or, 22S, 271, 330 

" Dictes and Sayings of the Philo- 
sophers," 324 

D'Israeli, I., 152 

Diss, 238-242 

Ditchingham, 232 

Lodge, 230 

Dixon, W. Willmot, 17S, 205 

Dobson, Austin, 273 

Dolphin Inn, Heigham, 149 

Donaldson, Dr. J. W,, 263, 264, 
266, 269 

Donne, Mowbray, 266 

, W. Bodham, 29, 96, 97, 263, 

264-269 

Drury, Sir Robert, 283, 284, 286, 288 

Dugdale, Sir W., 129 

Dumpling Green, 82-85 

"Dunciad, The," 238 

Dunham Lodge, 90-91 

Dunwich, 16, 32 

Earlham, 115, 123 
" East Anglian, The," 155 
East Dereham, 81-99 
Eastlake, Lady, 104, 176 
Echard, Lawrence, 216 
Edgew'orth, Frank, 6 
"Elijah's Mantle," 199 
EUingham, 227, 235 
Elmy, Sarah, 42, 45, 46, 49, 69, 214 
Enfield, Dr. W., 103 
"Essays of Elia," 228, 233 
Euston Hall, 130, 293, 296-298 
Evelyn, John, 129, 130, 131, 296- 
298 



Faiers, John, 7 

, Mrs., 8 

" Fall of Princes," 253, 254 

Farlingay Hall, 14, 15-17 

" Farmer's Boy, The," 293, 294, 295 

Fastolff, Sir John, 206 

" Father and Daughter," 104 

Fawcett, Professor, 52 

Fenn, Sir John, 87, 98, 99 

, Lady Eleanor, 87, 88 

Fenton, Elijah, 238 

FitzGerald, Edward, 1-26, 27, 29, 
5i-S4> 77, 96, 97> 154-161, 167, 
i75j 17S, 179, 204, 206, 214, 
227, 228, 235-237, 263, 264, 265, 
266, 267, 269, 270, 271 

, John, 15, 160 

, Peter, 263 

Fletcher, Joseph ("Posh"), 158, 
159, 161, 206 

"Foker, Mr.," 67 

Fornham, 276, 277 

Fox, C. J., 27, 74, 273 

Framingham Earl, 103 (footnote) 

Framlingham, 16, 55-68 

Frere, Serjeant, 99 

Fry, Elizabeth, 103, 172 

Gainsborough, 124 

Gairdner, James, 99, 207, 208 

Gale, William, 305 

Galfridus "Grammaticus," 305 

" Garden of Cyrus," 129, 138-140 

Garnett, Dr. R., 319 

Garrick, 224, 261 

Gascoigne, 255 

Gay, John, 299 

Geldeston Hall, 235-237 

Gell, Sir W., 243 

Genlis, Madame de, 272, 273 

"Gentleman's Magazine," 144 

Goldsmith, Oliver, 140, 280-283 

Gorleston, 193, 204, 206 



338 



INDEX 



Gosse, Edmund, 139, 141, 142, 190 

Gower, John, 255 

Grafton, Duke of, 293, 296 

Grammont's "Memoirs," 298 

Gray, Thomas, 189-192, 255, 298 

Great Glemham Hall, 75, 76, 77 

Green, Robert, 222 

Grey, Earl, 74 

Groome, Archdeacon, 9, 23, 24, 47 

Grout, John, 22, 24 

Gurney, Anna, 203, 204 

■ , J. H., 260 

, J- J-, 103, 115 

Hafiz, I 

Haggard, H. Rider, 231, 232 

Hake, Dr. Gordon, 174, 181, 202, 

264, 266, 267, 268, 269 
Hale, Sir Matthew, 257, 258 
Hallam, H,, 308 
Hanmer, Sir T., 262, 279, 284 
"Hard Measure," 147, 148 
Hardwick House, Bury, 268 
Harleston, 224 
Hawstead, 2S3-289 
Hay ley, W., 94 
Hazlitt, Mrs., 277 
Heacham, 315, 316 
Hedenham Hall, 232 
Heigham, 149, 150 
Henley, Orator, 238 
Heme, Mrs., 117 
Hervey, Frederic, Earl of Bristol, 

298 

, John, Lord, 298, 299 

■ , Lady Mary (Lepell), 299-301 

Hesketh, Lady, 89, 90 
Heydon, 317 

Hill House, Dereham, 98 
Hillinglon, 305 
Holkham, 329 
Honington, 290-296 
Hood, T., 314, 316 



Hopkins, Matthew, 256, 257 
"Horkey, The," 296 
Houghton Hall, 302, 309-312 
Howard, Henry, Earl of Surrey, 

59-65 
Howe, John, 21 
Hunstanton, 306 

Ickworth House, 298-301 
"Imbanking and Draining," 129 
Inchbald, Elizabeth, 273, 274 
Ipswich, 68, 298 
Irving, Sir Henry, 160, 314 

, Washington, 327 

Isola, Emma, 276, 277, 278 
Isopel Berners, 173, 180, 181 
Ives, Charlotte, 229-231 
Ixworth, 292 

Jeaffreson, J. Cordy, 66-68, 304 
Jeffrey, Archdeacon, 129 
Jenney, Mr., 6 
Jerrold, Douglas, 200 
Jessopp, Canon, 96, iii, 234 
"Jingle, Alfred," 270, 271 
Jocelin of Brakelond, 246-252, 256 
"John Gilpin," 93 
Johnson, Dr. 261, 

• , Rev. Dr., 90-94, 96, 264 

, Mrs. C. B., 29, 97 

, Miss, 91 

, W., 160 

Jones, Mrs. H., loi 

Keene, Charles, 10, 20, 21, 52 
Kemble, J. M., 263 
Kenninghall, 60 
Kerrich, Eleanor, 236, 237 
Kerrison, Roger, 120 
Kingsley, C, 167 
King's Lynn, 302-324 
Kirkley, 154 
Kitchin, Dean, 10 



INDEX 



339 



Knapp, Dr, W. I., 88, 112, 114, 
121, 123, 171, 172, 176, 183 

" Lady of Lynn," 320-323 

Lamb, Charles, 27, 28, 29, 228, 

229, 233-235, 243, 244, 275-279, 

290 

, Mary, 233 

Langham, 325-331 
Lasalle, 330 
Lauderdale, Earl, 74 
"Lavengro," 81,87, 104, 114, 116, 

119, 121, 174, 180,205, 266, 267 
Lavenham, 60. 
Lee, Sidney, 253, 255 
Leland, John, 60 
L'Estrange, Sir Roger, 306-308 
"Library, The," 78 
Lilly, 2S4, 285 
Lindley, John, in 
Little Glemham Hall, 74 

Grange, Woodbridge, 20-26 

Saxham Hall, 298 

Lofft, Capel, 275, 276, 294, 295 
Longfellow, 22 
Louis Philippe, King, 272 
Lowell, J. Russell, 24, 255 
Lowestoft, 24, 152-165, 186 
" Lover's Journey, The," 45 
Lubbock, Dr., 145 
Lydgate, John, 246, 253-256 

Macaulay, Lord, 263, 308 
Mackintosh, Sir J., 64, 103 
Maclise, D., 200 
Macro, Cox, 259, 260 
Malkin, Dr. B. H., 263 

, Frederick, 263 

, Sir B. Heath, 263 

Manning, Rev. C. U., 241, 242 

, Thomas, 233-235, 276 

Marryat, Captain, 168 ;/., 325-331 
, Florence, 328 



Martineau, Harriet, 102, 104, 106- 

lio, 118, 123, 202 

, Dr. J., 107, III, 113 

" Masterman Ready," 330 
Mattishall, 96, 97, 265 
Maurice, F. Denison, 167-169 
Mautby, 207-211 

McOubrey, Mrs, H., 172, 182-184 
" Memoirs of a Royal Chaplain," 197 
"Memoirs of Eighty Years, 264, 

268 
Merrett, Dr. C, 129 
Merton, 24, 26, 270 
Middleton Towers, 324 
Mileham, Dorothy, 12S 
Mill, J. Stuart, 103 
"Miller's Maid, The," 296 
Monsey, Messenger, 260, 261 
Montagu, Elizabeth, 261 

, George, 309 

, Lady Mary W., 299 

" Montes Glaciales," 92 
More, Hannah, 207, 224 
Morris, Rev. Edmund, 299 
Morston, 329 

Mousehold Heath, 62, 116, 117 
Mundesley, 89-91 
Murray, John, 176, 183 
Myngs, Sir Christopher, 326 

Narborough, Sir John, 326. 
Nash, Thomas, 152, 153 
Nelson, Lord, 326 
Newson, Thomas, 19 
Nicholas, Friar, 306 
NichoUs, Rev. Norton, 189-192 
Normanston Manor-house, 1 66-1 71 
North, Dudley, 27, 74, 75, 76 

Tuddenham, 89 

Norton, Charles Eliot, 24 
Norwich, 62, 100-151 

Occleve, Thomas, 255 



340 



INDEX 



O'Connell, Daniel, 204, 228 
Octagon Chapel, Norwich, 108 
Opie, Amelia, 104-107, no, 162 
Oulton Broad, 81, 121, 166-184 

Church, 182 

Cottage, 173-183 

Paget, Sir James, 200 

Palgrave, 242, 243 

•'Parental Monitor," 224, 225 

Parham, 69-80 

•' Parish Register," 74, 76, 77, 79 

Parr, Dr., 200 

Parry, Sir W., 97 

" Paston Letters," 87, 98, 99, 206- 

210 
Paston, Margaret, 207-211, 237 
, Robert, Earl of Yarmouth, 

130 
Peggotty's house, 195 
Pegram, Henry, 146 
" Pendennis," 67, 157 
Pepys, Samuel, 298, 307 
Perfrement, Ann, 84-86 

, Elizabeth, 84, 85 

Perowne, Miss, 91, 93, 94 
Petulengro, Jasper, 116, 117, 180, 

267 

, Mrs., 117 

Philo, James, 88 

Polidori, 108 

"Poor Jack," 329 

Pope, Alexander, 60, 91, 164, 238, 

299 
Porson, Richard, 233 
Potter, Rev. R., 164, 165, 192 
" Privateersman, The," 330 
" Proverbsof Christine of Pisa," 325 
Pulteney, 299 

Raven, Rev. Dr., 222, 238 
Ray, Dr., 178 
Raynham Hall, 329 



" Readings from Crabbe," 52 
" Red Register of Lynn," 323 
Reeve, Henry, 103 
" Religio Medici," 128 
Rendham, 77, 79 
Reynolds, Sir J., 47, 280 
" Richard and Kate," 295 
Richardson, Samuel, 243 
Rigby, Dr. Edward, 103, 104 
Ritchie, Ewing, 223 
Ritson, 255 
Rivers, Anthony Woodville, Earl 

of, 324, 325 
Robinson, E. Arlington, 51 
, H. Crabb, 263, 265, 275, 

279 
Rokewode, J. Gage, 246 
" Romany Rye, The," 175, 204, 205, 

267 
Roos Hall, 215 
" Rubaiyat " of Omar Khayyam, 10, 

13, 14, 16 
Rutland, Duke of, 49 
Rye, Walter, 128 71, 305, 306 

St. Andrew's Hall, Norwich, 130 
" St. Edmund, Life of," 254 
St. Leonard's Priory, Norwich, 62 
St. Peter Mancroft Church, 

Norwich, 144-146 
" Salaman and Absal," 10, 15 
Salthouse, 326 
Samson, Abbot, 246, 247, 248, 249, 

251,252 
Sapiston, 292, 293 
Sayers, Dr. Frank, 102, 199, 243 

, James, 199, 200 

Scole Inn, 237 

Scott, Sir Walter, 104, 243 

Scroope, Bishop, 162, 163 

Seccombe, T., 120 

" Settlers, The," 330 

Sheridan, R. B., 273 



INDEX 



341 



Sheringham Hall, 204 

Shovel, Sir Cloudesley, 326 

Simpson, William, 13 

, W., Town Clerk of Norwich, 

119 
" Sir Eustace Grey," 77, 78 
Skelton, John, 239-242 
Slaughden Quay, 34, 38-42, 52 
•' Sleeping Bard, The," 205, 206 
Smith, Goldwin, 93, 94 

, Job, 9, 14 

Southey, Robert, 28, 61, 104, 118, 

201 
Spalding, F., 206 
Spedding, James, 6, 9, 263 
Spelman, Sir H., 260 
Spenser, Edmund, 255 
Staverton Park, 60 
Stephen, Sir Leslie, 163, 167 
Stevenson, S. W., 103 
Stoke-by-Nayland, 59 
Stowmarket, 38 
Strange, Sir Hamon le, 129 
Strangers' Hall, Norwich, 114 
Strickland, Agnes, 64, 227, 268 
Stuston, 237, 23S 
Suckling, Rev. A. I., 216 

, Sir John, 215-220 

Suftblk, Henrietta, Countess of, 299 
Surrey House, Norwich, 62 
Sutton Hoo, 19 
Sweffling, 75, 76 
Symonds, Dr., 263 

Tanner, John, 164 
Tawno Chikno, 117 
Taylor, Thomas, 91 

, William, 102, 109, 117, 118, 

119, 120, 243 
Tendring Hall, 59, 60 
Tennyson, Frederick, 9, 228 

, Hallam, 22 

, Lord, 19, 22-24, 62, 168, 200 



Thackeray, W. M., 6, 67, 68, 103, 
157, 268, 269 

"Thebes, Fall of," 254 

Thetford, 298 

Thurlow, Bishop, 263 

"Tiresias," Dedication of, 23 

Tomline, G. Pretyman, 262 

Tomlins, T. Edlyne, 247 

Tovell, John, 69-74 

" Travels of Monsieur Violet," 330 

Trench, Archbishop, 97, 265 

Troston, 294, 295 

"Troy, History, Siege, and De- 
struction of," 254 

Tuck's Court, Norwich, 119 

" Tunning of Elinour Rummyng," 

239 
Turner, Dawson, 198, 202 
, Rev. R., 198 

Unwin, Mrs., 89, 91, 92, 94 
Upcher, Rev. A. W., 203, 204 
" Urn Burial," 129, 141 

Valpy, Rev. E., iii, 112, 113 
Vancouver, G., 303 
"Village, The," 35, 50, 78 
Voltaire, 299 
" Vulgar Errors," 128, 136 

Walpole, Henry, 303 

, Horace, 98, 297, 300, 301, 

308-312 
Walsingham, 128, 140, 141 
Waveney Valley, 212-244 
Webbe, 241 
" Weller, Sam," 270 
Wells, 326 

Wesley, John, 170, 198 
Westgate House, Bury, 265-269 
Whewell, Dr., 183 
Whiston, William, 163, 164 
I Whitefoot, Rev. J., 143, 144, 150 



342 



INDEX 



Wickhambrook, 42 

"Widow's Tale," 72 

Wilbraham, Roger, 74 

"Wild Wales," 119, 172, 183, 203 

Wilkin, Simon, 126, 127, 131 

"William Bodham Donne and his 

Friends," 29 
Wilson, Archdale, III 
Wingfield, 237 
Wollaston, Rev. C. Hyde, 88 
Woodbridge, I, 2, 6, 16, 18-30, 42, 

43.68 
Woodville, Anthony, Earl Rivers, 

324, 325 



Wordsworth, William, 201, 243 
" World of Dreams," 77, 78, 79 
"Worthies of Norwich," loi 
Wotton, William, 131 
Wright, Thomas, 7, 21, 156, 161 

, W. Aldis, 24, 215 

Wyatt, Sir Thomas, 62 

Yarmouth, 193-206 
Yaxham, 96 
Young, Arthur, 272 

"Zincali, The," 173 



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A 2 



10 



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[Continued 



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VENDETTA. Twenty-Fifth Edition. Cr. 

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34 



Messrs. Methuen's Catalogue 



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Fiction 



35 



THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW. 

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A DUEL. Cr Zvo. 6s. 

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ODD LENGTHS. Cr. Zvo. 6s. 
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36 



Messrs. Methuen's Catalogue 



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ABANDONED. Second Edition. Cr. Zvo. 6s. 

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Fiction 



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A MIDSUMMER DAY'S DREAM. 
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Methuen's Shilling Novels 

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Author of ' Miss Molly.' THE GREAT 

RECONCILER. 
Balfour (Andrew). VENGEANCE IS 

MINE. 
TO ARMS. 
Baring.aould(S.). MRS. CURGENVEN 

OF CURGENVEN. 
DOMITIA. 
THE FROBISHERS. 
CHRIS OF ALL SORTS. 
DARTMOOR IDYLLS. 
Barlow (Jane), Author of ' Irish Idylls.' 

FROM THE EAST UNTO THE 

WEST 
A CREEL OF IRISH STORIES. 
THE FOUNDING OF FORTUNES. 
THE LAND OF THE SHAMROCK. 
Barr (Robert). THE VICTORS. 
Bartram (George). THIRTEEN EVEN- 

INGS. 
Benson (E. F.), Author of 'Dodo.' THE 

CA.PSINA. 
Bowles (G. Stewart). A STRETCH OFF 

THE LAND. 
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Bullock (Shan F.). THE HARRYS. 
THE CHARMER. 
THE SQUIREEN. 
THE RED LEAGUERS. 
Burton (J. Bloundelle). THE CLASH 

OF ARMS. 
DENOUNCED. 
FORTUNES MY FOE. 
A BRANDED NAME. 



Capes (Bernard). AT A WINTER'S 
FIRE. 

Chesney (Weatherby). THE BAPTIST 
RING. 

THE BRANDED PRINCE. 

THE FOUNDERED GALLEON. 

JOHN TOPP. 

THE MYSTERY OF A BUNGALOW. 

Clifford (Mrs. W. K.). A FLASH OF 
SUMMER. 

Cobb, Thomas. A CHANGE OF FACE. 

CoUingwood (Harry). THE DOCTOR 
OF THE 'JULIET.' 

Cornford (L. Cope). SONS OF ADVER- 
SITY. 

Cotterell (Constance). THE VIRGIN 
AND THE SCALES. 

Crane (Stephen). WOUNDS IN THE 
RAIN. 

Denny (C. E.). THE ROMANCE OF 
UPFOLD MANOR. 

Dickinson (Evelyn). THE SIN OF 
ANGELS. 

Dickson (Harris). THE BLACK WOLF'S 
BREED. 

Duncan (Sara J.). THE POOL IN THE 
DESERT. 

A VOYAGE OF CONSOLATION. Illus- 
trated. 

Embree (C. F.). A HEART OF FLAME. 

lustrsted. 

Fenn (0. Manville). AN ELECTRIC 

SPARK. 
A DOUBLE KNOT 






Messrs. Methuen's Catalogue 



Findlater (Jaae H.)- A DAUGHTER OF 

STRIFE. 
Fitzstephen (0.). MORE KIN THAN 

KIND. 
Fletcher (J. S,). DAVID MARCH. 
LUCAN THE DREAMER. 
Forrest (R. E.). THE SWORD OF 

AZRAEL. 
Francis (M. E.). MISS ERIN. 
Gallon (Tom). RICKERBY'S FOLLY. 
Gerard (Dorothea), THINGS THAT 

HAVE HAPPENED. 
THE CONQUEST OF LONDON. 
THE SUPREME CRIME. 
Gilchrist (R. Murray). WILLOWBRAKE 
Qlanville (Ernest). THE DESPATCH 

RIDER. 
THE KLOOF BRIDE. 
THE INCA'S TREASURE. 
Gordon (Julien). MRS. CLYDE. 
WORLD'S PEOPLE. 
Goss (C. F.). THE REDEMPTION OF 

DAVID CORSON. 
Gray (E. M 'Queen). MY STEWARD- 

SHIP. 
Hales (A. G.). JAIR THE APOSTATE. 
Hamilton (Lord Ernest). MARYHAMIL- 

TON. 
Harrison (Mrs. Burton). A PRINCESS 

OF THE HILLS. Illustrated. 
Hooper (!.). THE SINGER OF MARLY." 
Hough (Emerson). THE MISSISSIPPI 

BUBBLE. 
'Iota' (Mrs. Caffyn). ANNE MAULE- 

VERER. 
Jepson (Edgar). THE KEEPERS OF 

THE PEOPLE. 
Keary (C. F.). THE JOURNALIST. 
Kelly (Florence Finch). WITH HOOPS 

OF STEEL. 
Langbridge (V.) and Bourne (C. H.). 

THE VALLEY OF INHERITANCE. 
Linden (Annie). A WOMAN OF SENTI- 

MENT. 
Lorimer (Norma). JOSIAH'S WIFE. 
Lush (Charles K.). THE AUTOCRATS. 
Macdonell (Anne). THE STORY OF 

TERESA. 
Macgrath (Harold). THE PUPPET 

CROWN. 
Mackie (Pauline Bradford). THE VOICE 

IN THE DESERT. 
Marsh (Richard). THE SEEN AND 

THE UNSEEN. 
GARNERED. 
A METAMORPHOSIS. 
MARVELS AND MYSTERIES. 
BOTH SIDES OF THE VEIL. 
Mayall (J. W.). THE CYNIC AND THE 

SYREN. 
Meade (L. T.), RESURGAM. 
Monkhouse (Allan). LOVE IN A LIFE. 
Moore (Arthur). THE KNIGHT PUNC- 
TILIOUS, 



Nesbit, E. (Mrs. Bland). THE LITER. 

ARY SENSE. 

Norri8(W. E.). AN OCTAVE. 

MATTHEW AUSTIN. 

THE DESPOTIC LADY. 

Oliphant (Mrs.). THE LADY'S WALK. 

SIR ROBERT'S FORTUNE. 

THE TWO MARY'S. 

Rendered (M. L.I. AN ENGLISHMAN. 

Penny (Mrs. Frank). A MIXED MAR- 
AGE. 

Phillpotts (Eden). THE STRIKING 
HOURS. 

FANCY FREE. 

Pryce (Richard). TIME AND THE 
WOMAN. 

Randall (John). AUNT BETHIA'S 
BUTTON. 

Raymond (Walter). FORTUNE'S DAR- 
LING. 

Rayner (Olive Pratt). ROSALBA. 

Rhys (Grace). THE DIVERTED VIL- 
LAGE. 

Rickert (Edith). OUT OF THE CYPRESS 
SWAMP. 

Roberton(M. H,). A GALLANT QUAKER, 

Russell, (VV. Clark). ABANDONED. 

Saunders (Marshall). ROSE A CHAR- 
LITTE. 

Sergeant (Adeline). ACCUSED AND 
ACCUSER. 

BARBARA'S MONEY. 

THE ENTHUSIAST, 

A GREAT LADY, 

THE LOVE THAT OVERCAME. 

THE MASTER OF BEECHWOOD. 

UNDER SUSPICION. 

THE YELLOW DIAMOND, 

THE MYSTERY OF THE MOAT. 

THE PROGRESS OF RACHAEL. 

Shannon (W. F.). JIM TWELVES. 

Stephens (R. N.). AN ENEMY OF THE 
KING. 

Strain (E. H.). ELMSLIE'S DRAG NET. 

Stringer (Arthur). THE SILVER POPPY. 

Stuart (Esmfe), CHRISTALLA. 

A WOMAN OF FORTY. 

Sutherland (Duchess of). ONE HOUR 
AND THE NEXT. 

Swan (Annie). LOVE GROWN COLD. 

Swift (Benjamin). SORDON, 

SIREN CITY. 

Tanqueray (Mrs. B. M.). THE ROYAL 
QUAKER. 

Thompson (Vance). SPINNERS OF 
LIFE. 

Trafford=Taunton (Mrs.E.W.). SILENT 
DOMINION. 

Upward (Allen). ATHELSTANE FORD. 

VV^aineman (Paul). A HEROINE FROM 
FINLAND. 

BY A FINNISH LAKE. 

Watson (H. B. Marriott). THE SKIRTS 
OF HAPPY CHANCE. 

' Zack.' TALES OF DUNSTABLE WEIR, 



Fiction 



39 



Books for Boys and Girls 

Illustrated. Ct-own Svo. y. 6d, 



The Getting Well of Dorothy. By Mrs. 

W. K. Clifford. Second Edition. 
Only a Guard-Room Dog. By Edith E. 

Cuthell. 
The Doctor ok the Juliet. By Harry 

Collingwood. 
Little Petek. By Lucas Malet. Second 

Edition. 
Master Rockafellar's Voyage. By W. 

Clark Russell. Third Edition. 
The Secret ok Madamk ue Monluc. By 

the Author of " Mdlle. l\Iori." 



Syd Belto.n : Or, the Boy who would not go 

to Sea. By G. Manville Fenn. 
The Red Grange. By Mrs. Molesworth. 
A Girl ok the Peoi'LE. By L. T. Meade. 

Second Edition. 
Hepsv Gu'SY. By L. T. Meade, is. 6d. 
The Honourable Miss. By L. T. Meade. 

Second Edition. 
There was once a Prince. By Mrs. M. E. 

Mann. 
When Arnold comes Home. By Mrs. M. E. 

Mann. 



ACTfi. 

The Adventures of Captain Pamphile. 

Amaury. 

The liiRD OF Fate. 

'J'he Black Tulip. 

The Castle of P>rsTEiN. 

Catherine Bllm. 

Chcilk. 

The Chevalier D'Harmental. Double 

volume. 
Chicoi the Jester. Being the first part of 

The Lady of Monsoreau. 
Conscienxe. 
The Convict's Son. 
The Corsican Brothers ; and Otho the 

Archer. 
Crop-Eared Jacquot. 
The Fencing Master. 
Fernande. 
Gabriel Lambert. 
(Ikorgrs. 
The Great Massacre. Being the first part of 

Queen Margot. 
Henri de N.w.^rre. Being the second part 
of Queen Margot. 



The Novels of Alexandre Dumas 

Price 6d. Double Volumes, is. 

H^LJtNE de ChAVERNY, 



Being the first part 

of the Regent's Daughter. 
Louise de la Valli^re. Being the first 

part of The Vicomte de Bragelonne. 

Double Volume. 
MAtTKE Adam. 
The Man in the Iron Mask. Being 

the second part of The Vicomte de 

Bragelonne. Double volume. 
The Mouth of Hell. 
Nanon. Double volume. 
Pauline ; Pascal Bruno ; and Bontkkoe. 
PkRE La Ruine. 
The Prince of Thieves. 
The Reminiscences of Antony. 
Robin Hood. 

The Snowball and Sultanetta. 
Sylvandire. 

Tales of the Supern.\tural. 
The Three Musketeers. With 

Introduction by Andrew Lang. 

volume. 
Twenty Years After. Double volume 
The Wild Duck Shooter. 
The Wolf-Leader. 



long 
Double 



Methuen's Sixpenny Books 



LOVE AND LOUISA. 
PRIDE AND PRE- 



AlbanesKE. M.). 
Austen (Jane). 

JUDICE. 
Bagot (Richard). A ROMAN MYSTERY. 
Balfour (Andrew). BY STROKE OF 

SWORD. 
Barin?.QouId(S.). FURZE BLOOM. 
CHEAP JACK ZIT.\. 
KITTY ALONE. 
URITH. 

THE BROOM SQUIRE. 
IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
NOfiML 

A BOOK OF FAIRY TALES. Illustrated. 
LITTLE TU'PENNY. 
THE FROBISHERS. 
WINEFRED. 
Barr (Robert). JENNIE BAXTER, 

JOURNALIST. 
IN THE MIDST OF ALARMS. 
THE COUNTESS TEKLA. 



THE MUTABLE MANY. 
Benson (E. F.). DODO. 
Bronte (Charlotte). SHIRLEY. 
Brownell (C. L.). THE HEART OF 

JAPAN. 
Burton (J. Bloundelle). ACROSS THE 

SALT SEAS. 
Caffyn (Mrs)., (' Iota'). ANNE MAULE- 

VERER. 
Capes (Bernard). THE LAKE OF 

WINE. 
Clifford (Mrs. W. K.). A FL.\SH OF 

SUMMER. 
MRS. KEITH'S CRIME. 
Connell (F. Norreys). THE NIGGER 

KNIGHTS. 
Corbett (Julian). A BUSINESS IN 

GREAT WATERS. 
Croker (Mrs. B. M.). PEGGY OF THE 

BARTONS. 
A STATE SECRET. 



40. 



Messrs. Methuen's Catalogue 



ANGEL. 

JOHANNA, 

Dante (Allghieri). THE VISION OF 

DANTE (Gary). 
Doyle (A. Conan). ROUND THE RED 

LAMP. 
Duncan (Sara Jeannette). A VOYAGE 

OF CONSOLATION. 
THOSE DELIGHTFUL AMERICANS. 
Eliot (George). THE MILL ON THE 

FLOSS. 
Findlater (Jane H.). THE GREEN 

GRAVES OF BALGOWRIE. 
Gallon (Tom). RICKERBY'S FOLLY. 
Qaskell (Mrs.), CRANFORD. 
MARY BARTON. 
NORTH AND SOUTH. 
Gerard (Dorothea). HOLY MATRI- 
MONY. 
THE CONQUEST OF LONDON. 
MADE OF MONEY. 

Gissing (George). THE TOWN TRAVEL- 
LER. 
THE CROWN OF LIFE. 
Glanville (Ernest). THE I N C A S 

TREASURE. 
THE KLOOF BRIDE. 
Gleig (Charles). BUNTER'S CRUISE. 
Grimm (The Brothers). GRIMM'S 

FAIRY TALES. Illustrated. 
Hope (Anthony). A MAN OF MARK. 
A CHANGE OF AIR. 
THE CHRONICLES OF COUNT 

ANTONIO. 
PHROSO. 

THE DOLLY DIALOGUES. 
Hornung (E. W.). DEAD MEN TELL 

NO TALES. 
Ingraham (J. H,). THE THRONE OF 

DAVID. 
LeQueux(W,), THE HUNCHBACK OF 

WESTMINSTER. 
Levett-Yeats (S. K.). THE TRAITOR'S 

WAY. 
Linton (E. Lynn). THE TRUE HIS- 
TORY OF JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 
LyaH(Edna). DERRICK VAUGHAN. 
Malet (Lucas). THE CARISSIMA. 
A COUNSEL OF PERFECTION. 
Mann (Mrs. M. E.). MRS. PETER 

HOWARD. 
A LOST ESTATE. 
THE CEDAR STAR. 
ONE ANOTHER'S BURDENS. 
Marchmont (A. W,), MISER HOAD- 

LEY'S SECRET. 
A MOMENT'S ERROR. 
Marryat (Captain), PETER SIMPLE. 
JACOB FAITHFUL. 
Marsh (Richard), THE TWICKENHAM 

PEERAGE. 
THE GODDESS. 
THE JOSS. 
A METAMORPHOSIS. 



Mason (A. E. W.). CLEMENTINA, 
Mathers (Helen), HONEY. 
GRIFF OF GRIFFITHSCOURT. 
SAM'S SWEETHEART 
' Meade (Mrs, L, T,), DRIFT. 
Mitford (Bertram). THE SIGN OF THE 

SPIDER. 
Montresor (F. F,). THE ALIEN. 
Moore(Arthur). THE GAY DECEIVERS. 
Morrison (Arthur). THE HOLE IN 

Ne8bit(E.). THE RED HOUSE. 

Norris(W. E.). HIS GRACE. 

GILES INGILBY. 

THE CREDIT OF THE COUNTY 

LORD LEONARD. 

MATTHEW AUSTIN. 

CLARISSA FURIOSA. 

Oliphant (Mrs.). THE LADY'S WALK. 

SIR ROBERT'S FORTUNE. 

THE PRODIGALS. 

Oppenheim (E. Phillips). MASTER OF 
MEN. 

Parker (Gilbert). THE POMP OF THE 
LAVILETTFS 

WHEN VALMOND CAME TO PONTIAC 

THE TRAIL OF THE SWORD. 

Pemberton (Max). THE FOOTSTEPS 
OF A THRONE. 

I CROWN THEE KING. 

Phillpotts (Eden), THE HUMAN BOY. 

CHILDREN OF THE MIST. 

'Q.' THE WHITE WOLF. 

Ridge (W. Pett). A SON OF THE STATE 

LOST PROPERTY, 

GEORGE AND THE GENERAL. 

Russell (W. Clark). A MARRIAGE AT 

SEA. 
ABANDONED. 

MY DANISH SWEETHEART. 
HIS ISLAND PRINCESS. 
Sergeant (Adeline). THE MASTER OF 

BEECHWOOD. 
BARBARA'S MONEY. 
THE YELLOW DIAMOND. 
THE LOVE THAT OVERCAME, 
Surtees (R. S.). HANDLEY CROSS. 

Illustrated. 
MR. SPONGE'S SPORTING TOUR. 

Illustrated, 
ASK MAMMA, Illustrated. 
Valentine (Major E, S,), VELDT AND 

LAAGER. 
Walford (Mrs. L. B.). MR. SMITH. 
COUSINS. 

THE BABY'S GRANDMOTHER. 
Wallace (General Lew). BEN-HUR. 
THE FAIR GOD. 
Watson (H. B. Marriot). THE ADVEN- 

TURERS. 
Weekes (A. B,), PRISONERS OF WAR, 
Wells (H.G,). THE STOLEN BACILLUS. 
White (Percy). A PASSIONATE 



MAH 2 1908 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



013 761 297 5 



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